Over the last few years Puerto Rico has made several changes to its taxation and incentives laws that affected the pharmaceutical sector, starting in 2008 when it introduced an automatic tax exemption for companies that invested in the country.
More recently, however, Puerto Rico has sought to increase the tax revenue it generates from offshore pharmaceutical firms that have operations on the island by imposing a 4 per cent export levy on exports.
And, while the plan is to gradually reduce this to 1 per cent in 2016, the pharmaceutical industry was initially critical of the change, suggesting that it would hamper manufacturing operations in the country.
Since then, however, an increasing number of manufacturers have reaffirming plans to stay on the island. At least that is according PRIDCO’s business development officer for life sciences, Victor Merced, who spoke with in-Pharmatechnologist.com at Interphex.