The legal guidelines governing foreign investments in Ecuador are generally based on the provisions of Decisions 291 and 292 of the Cartagena Agreement, which are in force for the countries of the Andean Pact. Particularly, the legal framework that regulates foreign investments in Ecuador is one that is approved by the Regulation on "Direct Foreign Investment and Contracts on Technological Transfer, Trademarks, Patents, Licenses, and Royalties", set forth by Executive Decree NO415 on January 8, 1993.
Following a trend of economic modernisation and openness to foreign capital, substantial legal and economic reforms have taken place in Ecuador in the past years, in order to offer broader facilities and make foreign investment more attractive and profitable. The latest reforms concerning the Executive Decree NO415 , give foreign capital a wide range of investment possibilities, under the same conditions given to domestic capital . Furthermore, a series of restrictions and conditions that for many years limited the affluence of foreign capital have been eliminated.
