Costa Rica: Economic Strength by Adaptation

The Costa Rican government has announced that its economy will not suffer a downturn from the U.S. slump. For the first time in 50 years the Costa Rican government was left with a $174million budget surplus. It is expected that the U.S. slump will do no more than limit Costa Rica's growth to 3.8%, down from 6.8% last year. Costa Rica has long been one of the best developed Latin American countries, because of forward thinking leadership.

Disbanding the military in the 70s freed up millions of dollars to develop the country's health and education sectors as well as the infrastructure. Thanks to that move, Costa Rica has a 95% literacy rate and one of the best educated populations in the Southern Hemisphere.

From starting life as a banana republic reliant on Banana and coffee exports, Costa Rica now has flourishing hi-tech and medical manufacture and export sectors, and services sector, on top of a rapidly growing tourism sector and successfully diversified agricultural export sector.

The hi-tech sector has attracted companies like Panasonic and Intel, the latter having invested some $800million into Costa Rica's coughers, with plans to invest a further $90million this year. 11,000 Costa Ricans are employed in the hi-tech industry, and hi tech exports were valued at over $2million in 2005. The fact that Intel has invested so heavily and continues to invest shows that it is still a growth sector. Working from developing countries like Costa Rica keeps costs down and profits up -- a portion of which is then reinvested in said developing country thus keeping the growth cycle going.

The agriculture sector has had to diversify because of regional competition and a changing global economy, but Costa Rica's agricultural industry has stayed strong by changing with the market. Costa Rica has complimented its original coffee and banana exports with pineapples, watermelons, papaya and tropical flowers, as well as diversifying agricultural methods to capitalise on new fair-trade exports, and luxury organic produce.

Costa Rica's perhaps less talked about industry is its flourishing services sector, with companies like Western Union, Microsoft, Unisys and Oracle operating call centres in the country.

Tourism to Costa Rica grew by 10.6% 2006-2007, receiving over 1.6 million visitors last year. Costa Rica has also been clever enough to diversify its tourism industry to keep up with demand, and is now offering eco-tourism holidays and medical tourism (plastic surgery) holidays.

This ability to adapt to changes in the global economy makes the outlook for Costa Rica's economy bright, and a property investment there even brighter.

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David Redfern is the director of DSR Asset Management Ltd an overseas property investment specialist. David works closely with developers in more than forty countries and oversees the DSR education programme which lectures individuals and organisations on property investment. Advertise Your Private Overseas Property

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