Costa Rica’s Business Environment

Business environments can help identify new business opportunities and useful resources, boost in planning, and enhance performance, growth, and profitability of the business. There can be two types of environments: micro and macro. Microenvironment refers to the combination of elements that complete a business which is internal within the company. On the other hand, a macroenvironment refers to a company that is in the market and relies on microenvironments such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Inflation, employment rates, expenditure, education, political stability, and monetary/fiscal policies of the country where the company is settled.

Inside the macroenvironment of a country, there is the market and natural environment. The market environment blends the external and internal factors that control the company’s marketing activities.Therefore, it establishes the business strategy, campaigns, etc.

Furthermore, the natural environment deals with a compilation of the natural resources, like raw materials and goods, that the company utilizes to operate, as well as anything that may influence their supply. For instance, natural disasters or national goals such as reducing carbon footprint.

According to the World Bank Doing Business survey, Costa Rica’s business environment is listed as fourth in Latin America and 74th globally. Factors that were considered for this ranking were the payment of taxes, access to credit, electricity, control of corruption, regulatory quality and rule of law.

In Costa Rica, our political stability is well anchored with our strong political institutions and long democratic tradition. In fact, Costa Rica is one of the most established democracies in Latin America and one of the few countries in the world that does not have a military force.

In the same manner, Costa Rica has a highly educated workforce because after the abolishment of the army our national budget was relocated to strengthen education programs and to finance free public education. In fact, in Costa Rica, primary and secondary education are free and mandatory, while the five public universities of Costa Rica receive a general annual percentage of the national GDP. Thanks to these efforts, Costa Rica has achieved a 98% literacy rate.

Among other notable achievements, Costa Rica can boast about the renewability of our energy, which has a rate of 93% of renewable energy, and also about prosperity factors such as individual freedom, political and governmental stability, and access to universal healthcare.

Costa Rica’s development is also shown in the GDP growth year after year. In the past decade, the country has seen a constant economic growth of between 2.2% and 4.9%, and there are more than 200 multinational companies currently operating in Costa Rica, a testament to the great business environment we provide for them.

Auditoría Valeria Peña Sequeira, International Business and Commerce Expert