Top 10 Costa Rica

Costa Rica Growth Down, Poverty Up

Facing growing tensions over price hikes Costa Ricans learned that the economic growth of their country will fall below the 2.2 percent planned.

The daily La Prensa Libre published the announcement on its front page of the digital edition.

According to the president of the Costa Rican Central Bank, Francisco de Paula Gutierrez, there will be a fall in the demand for goods and services, direct foreign investments and domestic demand including consumption and investments as a result of the international situation.

He predicted that the banks were in danger due to client defaults together with reductions and scarcity of credits that the citizens and companies can receive from financial entities.

With little more than four million inhabitants, Costa Rica is no exception regarding the impacts of the international crisis but the neoliberal policies of the Oscar Arias government tend to sharpen the problems, local specialists explained.

“Blind belief in the market god and its capacity of self-regulation,” seem prevalent, said the head of the Partido Accion Ciudadana de Costa Rica of the national parliament, Elizabeth Fonseca.

According to this deputy the government of her country grants privileges to business over social needs.

Figures of the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Policy reveal that the number of homes considered below the poverty line poor increased to over 219,700 representing 17.7 percent of all families.