Caribbean & Central America - September 2013 (ISSN 1741-4458)

New national brand: On 3 September, after five years in the pipeline, the Laura Chinchilla government launched its new national “brand” for the country: Esencial Costa Rica. The US$650,000 cost of developing the new brand was shared by the foreign ministry (Comex), the national tourism institute (ICT), foreign trade promotion agency (Procomer) and national coalition of development initiatives (Cinde). According to a Comex press release, the new brand, which aims to boost tourism, exports and attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), draws on Costa Rica’s reputation both for natural beauty as well as its high technology and innovation industry. According to a May 2013 report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America & the Caribbean (Eclac), Costa Rica maintained its position as the second leading destination for FDI in Central America (26% of the total), after Panama (34.0%). According to official estimates, FDI inflows to Costa Rica totalled US$2.3bn, a 5% increase on 2011. Meanwhile exports reached a record US$16.5bn in 2012, up 10% on 2011. According to the latest figures from the ICT, 1.3m tourists visited Costa Rica in the first six months of 2013, up 2.7% on the same period in 2012.

Competitiveness: The latest Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014 report released on 4 September by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) showed that Costa Rica moved up three positions to 54^th place. The report notes that while Costa Rica’s competitiveness profile “remains fairly stable, slight improvements in its innovation capacity (37^th) have driven this progress. Overall, the country continues to benefit from a fairly open economy (44^th) and strong institutions (50^th), despite rising concerns about the wastefulness of government spending (114^th) and fairly high costs associated with crime and violence (106^th)”.