Financial Services, Good for Business, Investments, Latvia, Markets and Companies, Port

Highly commended: Europe

Freeport of Ventspils, Latvia 

The Freeport of Ventspils boasts a diversified base of manufacturers, tenants belonging to the logistics and services sectors, including powerhouse names like US consultancy firm Accenture. The zone has spent efforts in developing its infrastructure and marketing activities to strengthen its brand. It has also been working with local stakeholders such as vocational education institutions to develop local talent in high-added-value sectors like IT, telecommunications, electronics, astronomy, engineering and mechanical engineering, noted FDI.

Methodology fDi’s Global Free Zones of the Year Awards 2020 acknowledge the most promising free zones across the world. For this year’s awards,fDi invited free zones, government entities and investment promotion bodies to complete a short survey detailing their zone’s attractiveness,facilities and incentives offered to investors. In total, 61 entries were received from free zones across the world. A panel of judgesfrom fDi was appointed and studied each location. Judges nominated their winning and runner-up locations in each region, as well as their top zones for SME and Large Tenant categories. In addition, some locations which were particularly outstanding have been acknowledged with honourable mentions and bespoke awards. We have also compiled a top ten ranking of zones, based on theweighting model as follows.