The mayor, María José García-Pelayo, and the special delegate of the State in the Cádiz Free Trade Zone Consortium, Jorge Ramos, signed yesterday morning the agreement for the launch of the Joint Office that will manage the tax facility in Jerez, a facility that will become an important industrial lung for the city and the province. Also present at the event were the first deputy mayor, Antonio Saldaña, and the delegates of Urban Planning and Mobility, Agustín Muñoz, and of Economic Impulse, Francisco Cáliz.
The mayor thanked, in the intervention after the signing of the agreement, “the fulfillment by Zona Franca of the commitments acquired with Jerez” and has highlighted that "the constitution of this Office will avoid all the obstacles that we could encounter if both administrations did not work together hand in hand."
The councilor added that "we are showing that we do not want to waste time and that we are facing all the decisions that we must adopt with the necessary speed so that this project becomes a reality as soon as possible, since it will be an economic boost for the city and the province."
For his part, the delegate of the Cádiz Free Zone, Jorge Ramos, highlighted the importance of the launch of this Office since it represents an important step for the expansion to Jerez. Jorge Ramos also commented that this is the first executive agreement to be signed "which demonstrates the interest shown by both parties to make it work immediately."
The delegate recalled that this project “is part of the Southern European Logistics Platform that will encourage merchandise flows, focusing not only on distribution but also on production and transformation.”
Once the agreement is signed, the Office will begin working immediately with the aim of promoting and expediting the implementation of the tax facility in Jerez. Located in the Agroindustrial Technology and Scientific Park, it will be coordinated by the Jerez Municipal Soil Company and will have personnel from both institutions.
The Office, which will be in charge of managing the tax precinct, will serve to instrumentalize all the steps of the project with the objective of being able to send to the Ministry of Finance and Public Administrations a preliminary study in which the needs of the tax precinct of Jerez are specified since the main objective, both of the City Council and the Free Zone, is that it can be launched over the next year.
The main functions of the Office will be the coordination of the activities to be carried out by both institutions to achieve the implementation of the fiscal precinct in the shortest period of time; the drafting of the dossier that the Consortium must present to the Ministry of Finance to obtain the necessary authorizations. The drafting and processing of urban planning and management instruments for the development of the sector, as well as the processing of the land expropriation file and the study of all alternatives to optimize the economic and technical viability of both the development of the land and the implementation of the fiscal precinct.
The facility will have approximately 250,000 square meters and includes the 'Dehesa de Siles II' sector.’ for its location, since it has sufficient surface area and a strategic location, at the foot of the A-4 and the railway line, next to the airport, the PCTA and the Ciudad del Transporte freight terminal.
The sector has an approved Partial Plan and the urbanization project is being developed to begin the expropriation process, which is included in the General Urban Planning Plan. An expropriation, which both the City Council and the Consortium want to be carried out in a negotiated manner with the owners.