Low labor costs
Surinamese minimum wage is established at 0.39 USD/hour, much lower than in the Netherlands, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Guyana and Jamaica.
Business services
PRIORITY SECTORS: BUSINESS SERVICES
Suriname: a land of services in a multicultural environment
Services are the main economic activity in Suriname, with an average contribution to GDP of 55% and employing two thirds of the country’s workforce. . Moreover, the average export in services in Suriname between 2005 and 2019 has been of USD200,98 million.
Due to the multiculturalism that characterizes its society, the country is ideal for the development of international services. That’s why the Government is firmly supporting the promotion of the business environment for the Information Technology Outsourcing, the Business Process Outsourcing and the Knowledge Process Outsourcing subsectors.
As a consequence, outsourcing is a rapidly growing sector in Suriname.
PRIORITY SECTORS: BUSINESS SERVICES
Competitive advantages:
Financial attractiveness
Flexible regulatory framework
The responsibility of social security contributions in Suriname falls on the employee .
Operational Costs
•Suriname is the most cost-effective destination for offshore Dutch support:
Low electricity price
0.054 USD/kWh
Low average rental rate
An office space rental rate per m2/month is about US$11,20
Lower fixed broadband basket
29,03 USD for 5 GB and a tax rate of 8%, while for the Netherlands the price is established at 60,11 USD 5 GB.
Exchange
rates
1 € =23,64 SRD 1 USD = 21,38 SRD
PRIORITY SECTORS: BUSINESS SERVICES
Competitive advantages:
People’s skills and availability
Multilingual skills: Suriname is the only South American country where Dutch is the official language, together with Sranan Tongo. However, English is spoken by most of the population and many people can speak Spanish and Portuguese .- Young workforce: the average age in Suriname is 29 years. In fact, almost 40% of the 2020 population belongs to the group considered as young labor force 15-39 years old).
- Supported skills development: Suriname relies on a public university and about ten private universities, institutes and academies providing education related to this sector, mainly in the fields of Business Administration, Information and Communication Technologies, Finances and Accountancy, Human Resources, Engineering and Architecture and Marketing among others:
- – Anton de Kom Universiteit van Suriname
- – The Technological University of the Americas
- – The Polytchenic College of Suriname
- – University of Applied Sciences and Technology – UNASAT
- – IMKB Suriname
- – Institute of Management and Information Technology (iMiT)
- – Smart Suriname Business Academy
- – Janssen
- – FHR Institute
- Workforce: currently, around 2.500 people work in the outsourcing sector.
Multilingual skills: Suriname is the only South American country where Dutch is the official language, together with Sranan Tongo. However, English is spoken by most of the population and many people can speak Spanish and Portuguese .
PRIORITY SECTORS: BUSINESS SERVICES
Competitive advantages:
Business environment
- Tax environment: The Doing Business Report of 2020 gives Suriname a score of 69,4 in terms of paying taxes, 8.9 points over the Latin America and Caribbean average.
- Low influence of criminality: Suriname has received actors in the Global Organized Crime Index of 2021 a score of 4.9/10 in terms of prevalence of criminal markets and structure and influence of criminal. This means that it is ranked as the 98th country in the world less influenced by criminality, with better scores than India (rank 129), Malaysia (rank 147), China (rank 152), Indonesia (rank 168) or Brazil (rank 171) and similar score to the Netherlands (4.69/10) .
- Cultural adaptability: Suriname relies on a peaceful multi-cultural society formed by Amerindians, East-Indians, Javanese, Maroons, Creole, Chinese and Europeans, among others. Therefore, its workforce is used to dealing with people that have different cultural characteristics.
- Protected Intellectual property: Suriname is member of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and has signed various International Property Rights (IPR) treaties:
- – Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, signed in 1997
- – Hague Agreement Concerning the International Deposit of Industrial Designs, signed in 1975
- – Nice Agreement Concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of Registration of Marks, signed in 1981
- – Paris Convention for the Protecting of Industrial Property, signed in 1975
- – Strasbourg Agreement concerning the International Patent Classification, signed in 1975
- – WIPO Convention, signed in 1975.
- Productive Capacities Index: The Productive Capacities Index of 2020 elaborated by the UNCTAD shows that Suriname has had a stable evolution of all the parameters composing the Index between 2000 and 2018. Three of them have been successfully improved in this period: Transport (+12,9 points), ICT (+9,4 points) and Private sector (+18,3 points).
- ICT development and costs:
- – Four Internet service providers and two telephone companies are active in Suriname
- – Telesur, is implementing a huge project to substitute copper cable network by a fiber optic network.
- – Bandwidths from up to 5/1 Mbps to 500/500 Mbps are available, with prices ranging from 11,54 USD to 2.411,62USD per month (with a 2 years contract)
- – The 2017 ICT Development Index placed Suriname, with a value of 5,15, in the 88th position of the rank, above countries such as Indonesia (rank 111) or India (rank 134) and getting similar values as Mexico (5,16) and Colombia (5,36).
- – The international internet bandwidth per internet user is of 66533,32 Bit/s.
- Time zone (GMT-3): Real-time services with the United States and Canada.
OTHER INTERNATIONAL SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES ALREADY ESTABLISHED IN SURINAME:
- Teleperformance
- ALEMBO
- Webhelp
- Sure Aim
- Strongbow
- Custom Connect
PRIORITY SECTORS: BUSINESS SERVICES
Opportunities
ITO
Information Technology Outsourcing
Website development- Web and mobile applications development
- Software development
- Software testing
BPO
Business Process Outsourcing
- Outbound/inbound calling (sales, recruitment, support)
- First-line/second-line support
- Email processing
- Customer satisfaction research
- Accounting, financial and billing services
- Marketing services
KPO
Knowledge Process Outsourcing
- Market research services
- Data processing
priority Sectors: business services
Support
Suriname Investment and Trade Agency (SITA) is the national Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (TIPA) and is comitted to be the strategic and the trusted partner of anyone who wants to do business in Suriname. Need support? Contact us here.
A. RELEVANT ENTITIES
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Business and International Cooperation (BIBIS)
- Ministry Of Economic Affairs, Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation
- Ministry of Transport, Communication and Tourism
- Telecommunication Authority Suriname
- Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Business and International Cooperation (BIBIS)B. POLICIES
The Policy Development Plan 2017-2021 elaborated by the Government is firmly committed to the reinforcement of the knowledge sector through the improvement of investments in information technology and the promotion of research programs in centers of excellence.
C. AVAILABLE INCENTIVES:
Suriname grants incentives for entrepreneurs related to the services sector who keep regular accounts on their operations (with annual closings) and who, in a year, invest in operating assets intended to be used within the framework of the enterprise.
The specific incentives are:
- Free write offs: when computing the profit enjoyed in a year for the profit of levying income tax, the amount of the investment (in operating assets) shall be depreciated arbitrarily.
- Exemption from income tax: The profit enjoyed in the commencement year of an enterprise (and the following 9 years) shall be exempted from income tax if certain requirements are met.
- Exemption from import duties: the import of capital goods can be partially exempted from import duties, turnover tax and statistics levy if certain conditions are met.