Alexander Mora, Costa Rica's Minister of Foreign Trade (Comex), gave an interview to La Nacion in which he spoke about the government's commercial area project.
According to Mora, the new Costa Rican government expects to make the Central American market part of the national domestic market. The minister suggested that Costa Rica "shouldn't differentiate between the regional market and the domestic market."
According to Mora, even though they still haven't defined procedures, they will seek to increase efforts, initiatives and resources that Costa Rica will allocate to Central America, within the terms of the work they have done so far.
The Costa Rican official warned that they hadn't determined how to act, but that they would strengthen the "agro-exporters, industrial (medium sized industries) and service sectors."
According to the minister, the Costa Rican medium sized agribusiness and manufacturing businesses need the Central American market more than the large companies.
The Minister stated that they needed to improve the quality of integration with Central America. He said "the Central American integration process is one of the oldest in the world, but it is also one of the slowest ones, especially because of institutional problems."
He also stressed that there were many issues to consider in the integration processes, such as: political, economic and legal issues. As an example, he said there were Central American countries with which Costa Rica has non-tariff barrier difficulties.
Therefore, in view of the number of exchanges there are, the country needs to work on the quality of integration, he stressed.
According to data released by Comex, sales to Central America amounted to $2,167,817 dollars in 2013. Central America is Costa Rica's second largest export destination, only being surpassed by North America. Following Central America are the European Union and the Asian countries.
Finally, the official said that the Government would present the evaluation of its first hundred days and that they would continue to pursue the general guidelines stated by the Government.
Source: marcotradenews.com