New Enterprise City will include Cayman college

Up to 500 students, including Caymanians aspiring to professional employment locally, will attend a ‘super university” in Cayman’s new Special Economic Zone, taught by a half-dozen of the world’s 
finest schools.

Caymanians will qualify for scholarships to the school, gaining free education and training at the International Academic Park in Cayman Enterprise City (CEC), and will be placed in the Special Economic Zone’s six industries, projected to employ nearly
5,000 people.
Based on a similar educational concept in Dubai’s Knowledge Village, part of CEC analogue, Dubai’s Multi Commodities Centre, the local academic park, according to Hilary McKenzie-Cahill, Vice President of Marketing and Development, will involve “between five and six major universities in one building”, offering “courses not currently available in Cayman, and teaching skill sets for jobs within the in the special
 economic zone”.

The Knowledge Village, according to its website, is part of a long-term strategy for regional development, and will upgrade individual skills and professionalism.

Working with the Ministry of Education, Ms McKenzie-Cahill said: “We will create a super university to train young people, through a Career Development Bureau, in which every job and every resume are properly matched.”

She declined to name the participating universities, but said CEC had already toured Cayman’s private schools, discussing career opportunities in the zone, and had recently gained permission from the ministry to visit government-
run schools.

“We are talking about 120 new types of careers,” she said, pointing to opportunities in the five other industrial “parks” comprising CEC.
Plans call for a “Commodities and Derivatives Park”, an international trade exchange for goods that, in Dubai, encompass gold, diamonds, pearls, tea and cotton. An “Internet and Technology Park” will look to development of software, hardware, telecommunications, e-commerce and information technology services. CEC has already spoken with Cisco, Oracle and IBM. The park , Ms McKenzie-Cahill said, will offer “opportunities for entrepreneurs and start-ups”.

A “Media Park” will provide production facilities for music, film and television, and facilities for information agencies, publishing and marketing. Planners were designing a sound stage to boost film production, enabling movie makers to claim tax breaks wherever they worked.

A “Biotechnology Park” will offer space for research, development and the considerable computer design and modeling for required by medical, agricultural and industrial engineering.

Finally, she said, an “Outsource Park”, would enable companies to create offshore management and financial operations, call centres and even engineering offices, and take advantage of the special economic zone commercial environment.

Import duties and work permits will be waived for zone-registered companies, which will benefit from fast-track trade and business licencing by a new Special Economic Zone Authority, legislated in September. Companies may be 100% 
foreign owned.

CEC developers had chosen the six zone industries, Ms McKenzie-Cahilll said, for their growing global prominence, and while exclusive to CEC, other zones with other industries were possible.

CEC developers also hope by next year to create a local patent registry for intellectual property, which now has to be established in a prolonged process under UK law, which ultimately extends protection to the
 Cayman Islands.

The special economic zone promises, in fact, to be a bonanza for local law firms, processing applications, employment, registration and the regulations governing  commercial functions, which, ultimately, may even include a system of “business passports” enabling travel among other economic zones in such places as Panama, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica in the Caribbean, and as many as 3,000 other special economic zones in 120 countries.