Yesterday we visited CINDE a nonprofit organization located in San Jose. CINDE interacts with compnanies outside of Costa Rica in the hopes that they will establish their business in Costa Rica. CINDE focuses on three specific sectors Advanced manufacturing, Electronics, and Services.
CINDE gave us a quick background on Costa Rican business. Costa Rica is an agriculture based economy and they are in the middle of adapting to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Costa Rica is currently seeing a shift from an Industrial economy to a service economy. Currently coffee only makes up about 3% of exports and Bananas are 7%. Real Estate is the 2nd biggest foregn investment and manufacturing is number one. Costa Rica is very much affected by globalization. They felt severe downturns with the dot.com bubble. Costa Rica in the 1980s experienced a recession because of their lack of exports. And as a result Costa Rica diversified and started to export more. Unemployment in Costa Rica is currently very low for their location (4.8%). They also told us that Costa Rican wages have been going up due to their ability to speak english.
The success in Costa Rica is due to its exports. And the entire economy is set up to intise companies to come to Costa Rica. For example Costa Rica has low Corporate income taxes, and in some cases for new companies no corporate income tax.
I personally thought of CINDE as being a very important peice to Costa Rican Success. Naturally Costa Rica is a big importer of American goods, but when they can intise companies to set up shop in Costa Rica it can only benefit their quality of life. Costa Rica in my opinion will only benefit from gloablization and what CINDE is doing currently. Costa Rica has many natural resources that are not being utilized and with proper approaches companies can benefit as well as the Costa Rican themselves.
CINDE gave us a quick background on Costa Rican business. Costa Rica is an agriculture based economy and they are in the middle of adapting to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Costa Rica is currently seeing a shift from an Industrial economy to a service economy. Currently coffee only makes up about 3% of exports and Bananas are 7%. Real Estate is the 2nd biggest foregn investment and manufacturing is number one. Costa Rica is very much affected by globalization. They felt severe downturns with the dot.com bubble. Costa Rica in the 1980s experienced a recession because of their lack of exports. And as a result Costa Rica diversified and started to export more. Unemployment in Costa Rica is currently very low for their location (4.8%). They also told us that Costa Rican wages have been going up due to their ability to speak english.
The success in Costa Rica is due to its exports. And the entire economy is set up to intise companies to come to Costa Rica. For example Costa Rica has low Corporate income taxes, and in some cases for new companies no corporate income tax.
I personally thought of CINDE as being a very important peice to Costa Rican Success. Naturally Costa Rica is a big importer of American goods, but when they can intise companies to set up shop in Costa Rica it can only benefit their quality of life. Costa Rica in my opinion will only benefit from gloablization and what CINDE is doing currently. Costa Rica has many natural resources that are not being utilized and with proper approaches companies can benefit as well as the Costa Rican themselves.
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