After the approval of a second round of regulations aimed at clarifying the language of the Opportunity Zones bill and due to the absence of state legislation that tempers the benefits of that federal program on a local scale, Puerto Rico runs the risk of losing the opportunity to attract new investments.

Recently, the revitalization coordinator for the Fiscal Control Board, Noel Zamot, denounced publicly that the current New Progressive Party administration would put road blocks to these types of investments to benefit friends and control private capital that entered the island. Now, lack of legislation that regulates this type of schemes also threatens investments.

'The Americans that were going to invest will now begin to spend money; they were waiting for the second set [of regulations]. Here in Puerto Rico they did not have much rush and would say 'well until the second set of regulations comes out people I will not start to invest'. It came out now, and people will start to invest and that is why it is so important to file local legislations for the 'opportunity zones',' warned the President of the Commerce Chamber, Kenneth Rivera Robles.

According to Rivera Robles, if local legislation to enable opportunity zones is not approved, investors could move to other states that already have their own legislation to set in motion their projects.

Currently, the Senate Project 1147 contains incentives such as a contribution rate of 20% over the net risk to exempt businesses, 50% in patent exemptions and property contributions, 100% exemption in construction taxes and a differal on taxation of capital gains for invested earnings in the opportunity funds qualified in Puerto Rico, among other benefits. That bill remains paralyzed since November of last year when the Senate did not agree on amendments proposed by the Chamber of Representatives of Puerto Rico.

Even though the President of the Chamber of Commerce anticipated that the bill would be approved soon, he emphasized that time was of the essence to capitalize on the federal program. 'If it is approved fast, it should not affect. They have to approve it now quickly,' Rivera Robles manifested.

'It is better to have it, in this historical moment you need legislation. You need to have legislation in place so that people can begin to invest and you need to have the flexibility and the agility so that, if you need to fix something, you can fix as briefly as posible,' added the Public Account, who did not mention if he was completely in agreement with the act as he did not have the final version of the conference committee.

House Approves Senate's Report

As the president of the Treasury Commission, representative Antonio 'Tony' Soto, anticipated earlier Wednesday, the conference report on the Opportunity Zones Project (Senate Project 1147) was approved in the House of Representatives, which now returns to the conference committee in the Senate.

'We must not lose the opportunity that the United States Congress gave us in its Tax Reform, by establishing a special rule for Puerto Rico, recognizing that more than 95 percent of our territory is considered Opportunity Zones', said Soto at a press conference today.

This project establishes the legal framework for those investors who look to Puerto Rico as a destination to invest in local projects or even develop their businesses and industries.

'We will continue working to make Puerto Rico a platform for investment and economic development mainly in our most needy and disadvantaged areas. With this initiative, in addition, we help create more and better new jobs for our people,' he concluded.