Zona Especial de Desarrollo Mariel — Cuba's Flagship Special Development Zone Falls Short of Its Targets

The Zona Especial de Desarrollo Mariel (ZED Mariel) is Cuba's flagship special development zone, created under Law 313 in 2013 and administered by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Trade and Investment near the port of Mariel, 45 km west of Havana. It offers foreign and joint-venture businesses exemption from employment and customs taxes, a one-year sales-tax waiver and a ten-year profit-tax holiday, and was launched with an official ambition of roughly 70,000 jobs.
By 2022, 62 businesses had been approved and 56 were operational, representing more than $3 billion in committed investment and over $1 billion actually executed, with 21 countries and 11 multinationals represented, according to OnCubaNews. However, only 328 people were reported working in operational businesses that year — a small fraction of the original jobs target — and of roughly 400 companies that expressed interest around 2016, only 64 were approved and 44 became operational, according to Diario de Cuba.
In December 2024 the Cuban government itself publicly acknowledged that the zone had failed to meet its goals, as reported by CiberCuba, and independent Cuban-focused outlets including Havana Times and OnCubaNews have documented the shortfall in detail, with Havana Times describing Mariel as an 'engine' of the Cuban economy that stalled. ZED Mariel is included here as a documented cautionary case: a large, genuinely multi-country special economic zone whose measured outcomes have fallen far short of its stated ambitions, illustrating the limits of SEZ incentives absent a stable wider economy and banking system.

Read the full analysis: https://oncubanews.com