Data-center law in Uruguay
National jurisdiction · as of 2026-09-05
Uruguay has no data-center-specific siting, permitting, or utility statute; a data-center project is governed by the general free-trade-zone and investment-promotion framework.
Ley N° 15.921 of 1987, as amended by Ley N° 19.566 of 2017, exempts a free-trade-zone user from national taxes on its zone activities and exempts goods, services, and equipment entering or leaving the zone from import and export duties, a route data-center operators commonly use to bring in servers and related equipment free of duty.
Ley N° 16.906 of 1998 separately lets the Executive Branch declare a specific investment project promoted, granting project-specific tax benefits including relief from the wealth tax, value-added tax, and specific internal tax on qualifying fixed-asset purchases.
Neither law names information technology or data infrastructure as a distinct sector, and neither addresses electricity grid interconnection, water use, or air emissions specifically; those questions fall to Uruguay's general land-use, environmental-licensing, and utility regulation.
01
Instruments on record
2 instruments on record, grouped by the family of approval each one governs.
Public agreements
What fiscal agreements attach a data center to its host jurisdiction?
Ley N° 15.921, Free Trade Zones Law, as amended
In force
Ley N° 15.921, de 17 de diciembre de 1987, en la redacción dada por Ley N° 19.566, de 2017
Applies to private
Article 19 exempts a free-trade-zone user from every national tax, created or to be created, on the activities it carries out within the zone under its authorization. Articles 21 and 22 exempt goods, services, merchandise, and raw materials from any tax or equivalent charge on their entry into or exit from a free-trade zone, whichever their origin or destination, so equipment such as servers and networking hardware can be imported into a zone free of duty.
Article 1-BIS defines a free-trade zone as a physically delimited and enclosed area of national territory, public or private, authorized for industrial, commercial, or service activity, and the law declares promoting investment, diversifying production, and encouraging high-technology and innovation activity a matter of national interest, without naming data-center or information-technology activity as a distinct category.
Source: Full text of law
Ley N° 16.906, Investment Promotion and Industrial Promotion Law
In force
Ley N° 16.906, de 7 de enero de 1998
Applies to private
Article 1 declares promoting and protecting national and foreign investment in Uruguayan territory a matter of national interest, and article 3 admits an investment without any prior authorization or registration requirement.
Article 11 lets an enterprise whose investment project is declared promoted by the Executive Branch access project-specific tax benefits, including, under articles 8 and 9, exemption from the wealth tax on qualifying fixed-asset purchases and exemption from value-added tax and the specific internal tax on the importation of those assets, with a corresponding refund of value-added tax paid on local purchases of them.
The law names no sector-specific rule for a data center; a qualifying capital-intensive facility of that kind accesses the same project-declaration route as any other investment project.
Source: Full text of law
Every entry cites the instrument it describes.
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