RAKEZ (Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone): free zone and non-free zone licences

RAKEZ describes itself as a business licensing authority "established by the Government of Ras Al Khaimah" that "offers customisable solutions" to free zone and non-free zone entities. The zone covers industrial, trading and service businesses, and its getting-started pages walk through licence selection, facility selection and visa steps. The emirate's own DED licenses ordinary RAK mainland companies, while RAKEZ runs both its free zone and a non-free zone licensing track.

A RAKEZ free zone licence gives you the standard free zone position: 100% ownership, repatriation of capital and profits, customs exemption on goods kept inside the zone, and the standard limit that mainland sales run through a distributor or a mainland branch or company. A RAKEZ non-free zone licence is, in RAKEZ's own framing, a licence for an entity operating outside the free zone. If your customers are in Ras Al Khaimah or elsewhere on the mainland, ask RAKEZ in writing which track it recommends for your activity and what mainland access each carries; the federal rule on free zone market access is on the free zones hub.

RAKEZ publishes packaged pricing on its website, and the package we saw on the review date included a residence visa. We do not publish the figure: it is promotional, changes without notice and is not a regulatory rule. Visa allocation per office type, office minimums and processing times are likewise not stated as rules on the pages we read. The federal position is that free zone visas depend on office size (Ministry of Economy and Tourism); RAKEZ applies its own table.

If Ras Al Khaimah suits your operations, send us the activity, your visa count and whether your customers are in the UAE. We will confirm which RAKEZ track the rules point to and what the zone and ICP will each ask for. To compare with Dubai zones, use the free zones hub.