Starting a business in Ecuador: foreigner's guide (2026)

Published in Registro Oficial Suplemento No. 56, this law imposed new prohibitions on simplified joint-stock companies (SAS)—barring them from strategic-sector and mining activities—and introduced the Anonymous Sports Company as a new corporate form. The tightening was driven by evidence of criminal infiltration into the SAS structure, which by 2025 represented ~91% of all new incorporations.

The World Bank's inaugural Business Ready (B-READY) report—successor to the discontinued Doing Business index—benchmarked Ecuador on Business Entry alongside 49 other economies, becoming the primary international reference for its starting-a-business framework after the prior index was suspended in 2021.

Published in the Official Register, this law reformed the Code of Production, Commerce and Investments and introduced tax exemptions for new investments in renewable energy, tourism, and manufacturing, reducing the regulatory and fiscal cost of formal incorporation and the early operating years of new enterprises.

President Lasso issued an executive Decree-Law reforming investment promotion rules and multiple regulatory frameworks, targeting up to USD 30 billion in private capital by 2025 and reducing the administrative friction for investors seeking to establish new businesses in Ecuador.

The National Assembly abolished the mandatory two-partner minimum for corporations and limited-liability companies—allowing single-person legal entities—and permitted incorporation via private document rather than a costly public notarial deed, cutting typical notary costs from USD 1,000–1,500 to near-zero for baseline incorporations.

The SCVS and the tax authority (SRI) automated the simultaneous grant of the company registration number and the taxpayer ID (RUC) for SAS companies incorporated electronically through supercias.gob.ec, collapsing what was previously a separate multi-agency process into a single session that could be completed in a few hours.

This reform to the Companies Act first authorized the use of private documents (without a notary) for company formation and recognized single-person company acts, directly precursing the 2023 comprehensive reform and beginning the dismantling of the decades-old notarial-deed requirement.

Published in Registro Oficial Suplemento No. 151, this landmark law created the Sociedad por Acciones Simplificada (SAS)—formable by a single person with USD 1 minimum capital via a private document registered directly with the SCVS, bypassing both the notary and the Mercantile Registry—and established the National Entrepreneurship Registry (RNE) unlocking preferential financing for qualifying startups.

A sweeping economic package that introduced tax-holiday incentives for new productive investments, investment-protection clauses, and simplified administrative procedures for qualifying enterprises, establishing the foundational investment-promotion architecture that subsequent 2020–2023 reforms built upon.

A comprehensive codification published in Registro Oficial No. 312 unified all company types (anonymous/corporation, limited-liability, collective, mixed-economy), mandated Mercantile Registry inscription via public notarial deed, and set minimum capital thresholds—creating the baseline corporate law that governed business formation until the 2020s reform wave.

Ecuador's first standalone Companies Act, published in Registro Oficial No. 181, established mandatory notarial-deed incorporation, multi-shareholder minimums, and Mercantile Registry registration as conditions for legal existence—requirements that would govern business formation for over five decades and whose removal became the central thrust of 21st-century reform.