Archive for November 26th, 2008
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
A lingering storm on the Caribbean side of the country has indirectly claimed its first victim, a man in the town of Siquirres.
Red Cross spokeswoman Fiorella Vilca said the man was electrocuted, apparently while working in wet clothes on an electrical cord in his home.
Vilca said the Red Cross could not yet confirm the victim’s name or age.
Some 4,000 people have been forced into shelters and 35 roads sustained damage, mostly in Siquirres and the Caribbean province of Limón, which have been put on maximum alert for flooding and landslides, the National Emergency Commission reported.
The commission initially reported yesterday morning that the low pressure system showed signs of becoming a cyclone, but the storm later subsided slightly and the chance of it becoming a cyclone was reduced to 20 percent, said Evelyn Quirós, of the National Meteorological Institute.
The Caribbean region today is likely to see a gradual lightening up of rain, she said, but the cool temperatures felt in many parts of the country should be similar to yesterday.
Heavy rains also caused the deaths of four people in nearby Panama, according to the news agency EFE.
Posted in Costa Rica News | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
Costa Rica is considering levying a $15 tax on international passengers arriving in the country, causing the airline industry, represented by IATA, to cry foul.
The law currently being debated would tax arriving passengers but would not apply to Costa Ricans. IATA, in a letter to the minister of tourism, says the proposed tax could be perceived as discriminatory.
Furthermore, IATA argues that the tax could be a disincentive for travelers to visit Costa Rica. But this tax could unravel years of work by turning visitors away and sending the wrong signals, IATA says.
Tourism will account for 13.5% of Costa Rica’s GDP this year, which suggests how important the sector is to the country’s economy, IATA says.
The proposed tax could siphon off passengers to other countries in the region. It also runs contrary to Costa Rica’s agenda to increase tourism to the country. Much like a tax on tobacco, the proposed tax will penalize tourism, and the government will see the collection of the tax decrease as tourism diminishes.
Argentina last month began levying a reciprocal tax on citizens of countries that require visas of Argentine nationals. IATA objected to that tax for much the same reason it objects to Costa Rica’s planned tax.
Posted in Costa Rica News | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
Costa Rica’s manufacturers are asking to be excluded from the free trade treaty the Central American country plans to negotiate with China in a process set to begin in January.
The head of the Chamber of Industries of Costa Rica, or CICR, Juan Maria Gonzalez, told a press conference that there are very few sectors that can provide a profit for Costa Rican industry within the trade accord with China.
Gonzalez said that Costa Rica has much to lose by agreeing to a treaty of this kind with the giant Asian nation and should push for a partial accord in which the market is opened up only to certain sectors and products.
“An FTA (free trade agreement) puts all sectors on the negotiating table. A treaty of this kind with a manufacturing country like China limits the decisions on the future of local industry, and therefore we ask for the sector to be excluded” from it, he said.
The CICR says that a treaty with China “is not appropriate” because that country still has some of the bad habits of a centralized economy, including little experience with the regulations of the World Trade Organization and, above all, it has not been able to establish effective health and safety controls for its exports.
In addition, the “artificially low” prices of Chinese products would represent unfair competition for Costa Rica’s domestic producers, the CICR says. EFE
Posted in Costa Rica News | No Comments »
