I am Vince Cate and live in Anguilla and am now working on http://seastead.ai
We have a design for a seastead that we can get fabricated in China, shipped
here, and then assembled locally and launched.   I have some 1.3 acres
right next to the port and a big crane and I got planning to zone
me as a shipyard. 

Do you know if Anguilla has any provisions for letting a company import parts duty free
if they are going to be used on something that will be sold overseas?
Or do other locations have this?  Having to pay duty is a big factor in 
deciding where I should assemble the seasteads.

I am worried that I might have trouble getting duty free status and government license for the seastead launches and 
so am interested in what other places might be reasonable to assemble and launch
the seasteads.  It also may just be easier to hire someone with experience than to try
to do it all ourselves.  I would prefer to have someplace nearby if possible
and someplace where parts are duty free and the government is not too painful to deal with.

I think in Sint Maarten there are no duties, so if we ship in the parts and assemble them there we won't have to
pay customs duties on the parts, is that correct?  And they have some shipyards.
The exit from the lagoon in St Martin at the Simpson Bay drawbridge is 17 meters wide
and 6 meters deep, so this is enough for the expected size of our seastead.

The Colón Free Trade Zone (CFTZ) in Panama seems interesting.  There are direct flights from Sint Maarten to Panama
so it is not too painful to go there.  Also, Panama has registered SeaPods from Ocean Builder which are sort of
seasteads.  

I think Curacao and Trinidad have FTZs, and maybe others in the Caribbean and have shipyards
that could work for assembling and launching a seastead? (nice if not too far from Anguilla)

For the locations we should look at please:
1) Is it duty free to import things then assemble them and export them?
2) List some shipyard companies in each location of these and tell me about them
3) Estimate if assembly took 5 people 1 month what it would cost to assemble and launch?

A key component of my current seastead design is a duplex stainless steel tank about 4 feet in diameter, 24 feet long,
and with dished ends.  The sides are 1/4 inch thick and the ends 1/2 inch thick. Are there any places in the Caribbean 
that could make this?  I sort of expect to order them from China but it could be nice if there was a place nearby that 
could make them for a reasonable price.