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Honduran law firm. Corporate advice, compliance and permits; employment and administrative litigation.

Practice areas

Regulatory & permits

We take companies through the permits they need to operate and sell in Honduras, from working out what is actually required to tracking what expires.

What we file

  • Sanitary registration of products before the Health Regulation Agency (ARSA), including food, beverages and hygiene products.
  • Sanitary licence for establishments, and its renewal.
  • Free-sale certificates, usually required when a product is exported or registered in another country.
  • Amendments and renewals of existing registrations: changes of formula, label, holder or manufacturing site.
  • Permits before other regulators where the activity requires them, including fire authority, environmental authority and municipalities.

The real problem is not filling in the form

It is knowing what is required today. Honduran institutions publish their requirements on official portals, but versions from different years coexist and it is not always clear which one governs. A file assembled from a superseded list comes back with observations, and every round of observations costs weeks.

We verify validity before assembling the file

We maintain our own inventory of the requirements published by Honduran state institutions and of the date each one was last confirmed. Before starting a filing we check that the list we are about to rely on is still supported, rather than assuming that it is.

Where a requirement has no recent confirmation, we say so and confirm it directly with the institution before filing. A two-day phone call is preferable to a two-month observation.

Technical documentation

A sanitary registration does not rest on legal documents but on the technical documentation of the product, which almost always comes from the manufacturer and often from abroad. Anticipating it is what decides whether the filing takes weeks or months:

  • Qualitative and quantitative formula, issued by the manufacturer.
  • Safety data sheet, where the product type requires one.
  • Label artwork compliant with the applicable rules.
  • Power of attorney in favour of whoever files in Honduras, duly legalised if granted abroad.
  • Documents of origin legalised or apostilled and, where in another language, translated.

Legalisation of foreign documents is, in our experience, what delays these files the most. It is worth starting there and not leaving it until the end.

How we run it

  1. Diagnosis

    1. Product or activity classification
    2. Which regulator has competence
    3. Which requirements are still in force

  2. The file

    1. Technical documentation review
    2. Legalisation and translation of foreign documents
    3. Power of attorney

  3. Filing

    1. Submission
    2. Response to observations
    3. Resolution

  4. Validity

    1. Expiry tracking
    2. Renewals
    3. Post-approval amendments

Resolution times are set by each institution and vary with its workload, so we do not commit to deadlines that are not ours to keep. What we do control is that the file goes in complete and that observations are answered without delay.

After the permit

A sanitary registration expires, and a company that lets it lapse cannot sell until the position is regularised. We track our clients' expiry dates and give notice in advance, because a renewal filed on time is routine and a lapsed one is a problem.

Putting a matter to us

Write to us with a brief description of your situation and the relevant dates. We will tell you whether the matter falls within this practice and how we would proceed.

Write to the firm