Maquila Decree

The Maquila Decree, established in 1989, lays out the legal requirements for foreign operations in

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. As described by the Bancomext Mexican Showroom, an organization to promote foreign investment in Mexico, this program allows foreign companies to build and operate

factories A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. T ...

in virtually any Mexican location of their choosing. These companies are allowed to import materials and equipment

duty-free A duty-free shop (or store) is a retail outlet whose goods are exempt from the payment of certain local or national taxes and duties, on the requirement that the goods sold will be sold to travelers who will take them out of the country, w ...

, the only limitation being that these items will at some unspecified date be removed from Mexico. For these reasons, items manufactured in Mexico are generally

export An export in international trade is a good produced in one country that is sold into another country or a service provided in one country for a national or resident of another country. The seller of such goods or the service provider is an ...

ed. As for the items being manufactured, there are virtually no restrictions other than obtaining a special permit if the product involves

radioactive material A radionuclide (radioactive nuclide, radioisotope or radioactive isotope) is a nuclide that has excess nuclear energy, making it unstable. This excess energy can be used in one of three ways: emitted from the nucleus as gamma radiation; transfe ...

or firearms. The limitations are so lax that even activities such as data processing are allowed, and not necessarily in conjunction with other

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...

activities. Furthermore,

income Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. Fo ...

and

property tax A property tax or millage rate is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or net wealth, taxes on the change of ownership of property through inhe ...

es payable to the

Mexican Federal Government The politics of Mexico take place in a framework of a federal presidential representative democratic republic whose government is based on a congressional system, whereby the President of Mexico is both head of state and head of government, an ...

are minimal. Some of the maquiladores pollute the Rio Grande. Industry in Mexico Law of Mexico Labor in Mexico Economic history of Mexico Occupational safety and health Decrees {{Mexico-hist-stub