Costa Rica threatened by Politics


News from Panama / Monday, March 24th, 2014

Lack of clear leadership, internal chaos in the main political parties and parliamentary fragmentation are threatening Costa Rica’s business climate.

Contradictory statements over the legal certainty of the project for a mega container port in Moin ($1 billion), made by the very probable next president of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solis, and the founder of his party (Citizen Action) and deputy chief of the legislative group, Otton Solis have generated understandable alarm in the business community.

The Costa Rican-North American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) expressed its concerns, and its leader, Humberto Pacheco, said: “We believe that the candidate (Luis Guillermo SolĂ­s) is very good, but we have concerns especially over the extreme wing that exists in the Party, which is still at this point contradicting their candidate with public demonstrations such as those you heard. ”

While the presidential candidate had come down on the side of respecting the concession contract with the Dutch company APM Terminals, specifically noting that there would not be a review of that concession, the elected deputy Oton Solis expressed his intention to scrutinise it, ie “spy , inquire, search with diligence and care, and go through something in order to find something hidden. ” (Definition by the Royal Spanish Academy).