A free port (porto franco) or free zone (zona franca), sometimes also called a bonded area (US: Foreign-Trade Zone) is a port, port area or other area with relaxed jurisdiction with respect to the country of location. Free economic zones may also be called free ports.
Most commonly a free port is a special customs area or small customs territory with favorable customs regulations (or no customs duties and controls for transshipment). Earlier in history, some free ports like Hong Kong enjoyed political autonomy. Many international airports have free ports, though they tend to be called customs areas, customs zones, or international zones.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, free and/or ports:
“I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to forget,
but I see they are the same list.”
—Linda Pastan (b. 1932)
“We saw the machinery where murderers are now executed. Seven have been executed. The plan is better than the old one. It is quietly done. Only a few, at the most about thirty or forty, can witness [an execution]. It excites nobody outside of the list permitted to attend. I think the time for capital punishment has passed. I would abolish it. But while it lasts this is the best mode.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Now, aged 50, I’m just poised to shoot forth quite free straight & undeflected my bolts whatever they are.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)