Costa Rica information, activities and news
The Autoridad Reguladora de Servicios Públicos (Aresep) on Monday approved a hike in taxi fares of 24%, giving in to the pressures of the Federación Nacional de Taxis.
The taxi association argued that operating costs, like gasoline, circulation rights, salaries, etc, have all gone up, justifying an increase.
The new taxi rates that will take effect in January will see the first kilometer jump to ¢510 colones from the current ¢455.
Vanessa Jiménez is a young mother with only one wish on her Christmas list this year, that the United States government issue her a visa to travel to the US to visit her eleven year old daughter who is serious condition in a Florida hospital after suffering an accident.
Vanessa is making the public appeal after the US Embassy in San José denied her a visa, to be with her daughter’s bedside.
Vanessa told Telenoticias that her daughter is in a coma, suffering an accident while vacationing in the US with the father.
The woman in a television interview related her reaction to the news of her daughter’s accident and her experience at the US Embassy in San José in her attempt to get a visa to be with her daughter.
The prediction is that American tourists will regain confidence in the economy and begin once again to visit Costa Rica during the 2010 “high” tourist season, which is between November and March.
A study by Deloitte shows that 45% of the 2.000 people interviewed would come to Costa Rica to vacation.
Juan Carlos Ramos, president of the Cámara Nacional de Turismo (Canatur), said this is good news for the local tourism sector.
The Deloitte study revelas that 59% take int account value when seeking out a vacation spot. Ramos said that Costa Rica is in a good position to take advantage to attract more tourist.
During the first nine months of 2009, a total of 601.830 American tourists chose Costa Rica, 6.9% lower than for the same period in 2008, representing almost 41% of income by the tourism sector.
The largest single group of tourists to Costa Rica are from the U.S.
BNamericas reports that Costa Rica’s state-owned telecoms monopoly ICE has signed an agreement with the environment, energy and telecommunications ministry Minaet which paves the way for a much anticipated mobile spectrum auction. Costa Rica is due to be one of the last countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to liberalise its mobile telephony market, as required by the Central America and Dominican Republic free trade agreement with the US (CAFTA-DR). President Oscar Arias is expected to now instruct telecoms regulator Sutel to launch an auction, possibly before the end of the year: Digicel, Cable & Wireless, America Movil, Millicom and Telefonica have all expressed interest in entering the market. Some 100MHz of frequencies in the 850MHz, 1800MHz and 2100MHz bands will be up for grabs. The new licences are expected to be awarded by June 2010.
In related news, ICE said it has already sold 2,377 3G connections since the new network went live last week. In addition, some 1,711 TDMA customers had migrated to the new network, retaining their numbers.
