By The Star Staff
Senate President José Luis Dalmau Santiago announced Wednesday that a bipartisan bill creating tax incentives that would stimulate investment and economic development in Puerto Rico was introduced in Congress.
The bill, Dalmau Santiago said, will bring about the return of various manufacturing industries in the nanotechnology, aerospace, pharmaceutical, semiconductor and medical device sectors.
“Since last year, we have been promoting the filing of this investment credit measure that will achieve the return of multiple industries to the island that went to distant places,” he said. “After the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States government has realized that the supply and production chain for the United States is better protected by locating these industries in the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico instead of leaving them in countries like Singapore or China.”
Dalmau Santiago added that in 2023 the island Senate recruited a group of experts on the federal tax issue who have worked in Congress to design a new investment model that encourages the creation of jobs and the capitalization of the island’s banks to stimulate the economy.
“After evaluating different mechanisms to attract investment and achieve reshoring or relocation, we identified that this is the ideal one to make the most of the experience of using Investment Tax Credits (ITC) and, therefore, facilitating a faster movement of supply chains from Puerto Rico instead of their occurring from less secure and more distant places from the U.S. such as China, India and Singapore,” Dalmau Santiago said.