Understanding Freeports

Freeports

Liverpool City Region was an obvious location for a Freeport with its historic docks, including the deep-water container terminal at the Port of Liverpool, the UK’s largest western facing port, handling 45% of trade with the US.

The Freeport status will act as a magnet for jobs, investment and trade at the specially designated sites within the region, and the government’s approval of the LCR Freeport’s business plan lights the touchpaper on increasing economic activity by as much as £850m.

But the LCR is not just important to the Liverpool City Region itself, but as the only Freeport in North West England it will be a focus for increased activity across the region as the Freeport improves trade opportunities.

The direct benefits of Freeport status based on the government’s objectives are to establish hubs for global trade and investment; create hotbeds for innovation; and promote regeneration with the creation of highly skilled jobs.

There are several levers that apply to enable this, including tax reliefs, customs arrangements, planning, regeneration, innovation and trade and investment support.

Every Freeport has at least one customs site, with multiple potential benefits for authorised businesses within the site including:

• Access to duty suspension, duty exemption on re-exports and flexibility on duty calculations

• Streamlining of processes

• Special procedures on movements of goods

An added incentive are the tax benefits within the ‘tax site’ enterprise zones including on Business Rates, Employer’s National Insurance, Stamp Duty Land Tax, and Enhanced Capital, Structure and Building allowances. If all of this sounds too good to be true for your business, then get your skates on and explore further.

The only downside I can see is that there are only a limited number of Freeports in the country and only one in the North West.

Free Trade Agreements

I have taken part in several Government briefings discussing Free Trade Agreements in recent weeks and, whilst there are still complex topics to be decided, the progress is impressive. The Australia and New Zealand agreements are currently working their way through parliament, and the Ukraine FTA has been extended with a Digital Trade Agreement.

In addition, there are some major agreements making real progress.

One of the more imminent (at the time of writing) of these is the snappily named Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTTP) whose current members are Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Whilst the UK already has bilateral Trade agreements with seven of the members, accession to the CPTTP is expected to