Wine Law

regulations for Economic Contracting”, and Decree No. 310, dated 17 December 2012, regulating contracts types). These regulations have contributed to the process of transformations linked to the updating of the Cuban economic model and basically aimed at establishing regulations that recognised and provided greater contractual autonomy to the subjects of the contracts, contributing as well to an increase in their responsibility to fulfil their obligations. The Cuban legislation in force (Decree-Law No. 304, Article 1), when referring to the scope of application, specifies that this Decree-Law “is applicable to the contract understood as a legal act through which legal-economic relations of a mandatory nature are created, modified and extinguished, for the execution of a productive, commercial or service provision activity, in which both national natural and legal persons and foreign natural and legal persons that are domiciled, established or authorised to operate in the country intervene.”. The revitalisation of foreign investment is another of the areas strengthened in the last decade. At the end of 2013, a new policy was approved that already defines a more important role for foreign investment and has a sectoral approach. On the legal level, with the entry into force of Decree-Law No 313, the creation of the Mariel Special Zone for Development (MSZD) was approved. The MSZD is the first of its kind in Cuba, enjoying a privileged geographical position, in the centre of the Caribbean Sea, at the crossroads of the mainmaritime traffic routes of goods in the Western Hemisphere. It provides an outstanding productive and logistic platform, which facilitates a higher level of national production while reducing import costs, boosting growth, creating jobs and facilitating foreign direct investment (FDI) 22 . TheMSZD’s Office is the entity assigned to the Council of Ministers, being also in charge of administering the Zone, controlling its activities and developing and conducting its Development and Business Program. The legal regulations governing the MSZD were published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Cuba. On 23 September 2013, in its 26 th Extraordinary Edition, the Council of State published 22 The Cuban state has invested an average of 300 million dollars per year in the development of high standard infrastructure, which is already available to investors; see: http://www.zedmariel.com/es. The Area of MSZD covers approximately 465 square kilometres and includes several municipalities in the province of Artemisa. For its creation, during the last years, similar experiences in different countries of the world were analysed, which were later adapted to the Cuban context.