Costa Rica jumped ahead seven places compared to last year and ranked 47th out of 137 countries evaluated. In the region it is positioned as the second most competitive country, after Chile.
This is indicated by the Global Competitiveness Report 2017-2018, prepared by the Latin American Center for Competitiveness and Sustainable Development of Incae Business School.
This study – carried out with the support of the regional partner of the World Economic Forum since 1999 – analyzes the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of an economy.
Those responsible for the place that Costa Rica occupies in the indicators of better performance are health, education, availability of mobile internet, openness for attracting investments, transfer of technology, sophistication of business and innovation.
Good qualifications in education and health are partly a result of the accumulation of good social progress policies since the Independence.
The successes related to investment and technology respond to more recent structural changes, resulting from two important milestones: the liberalization of the economy after the debt crisis and the approval of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States that brought the opening in telecommunications.
Nevertheless, one of Costa Rica’s weaknesses is the deterioration of governmental institutions, which is measured through variables such as distrust on politicians, diversion of public funds, irregular payments and bribes, inefficiency of public expenditure and of the Judiciary to solve disputes and costs associated with crime and violence.
In addition, infrastructure remains a permanent weakness and its effects go beyond their impact on productivity as such, since these deficiencies have serious implications for health (pollution, accidents and road deaths), peace and collective well-being and the State’s capacity to resolve these issues has been largely overcome.
In the region, Chile (33) continues to lead, followed by Costa Rica (47) and Panama (50).
The main declines in competitiveness in the region were registered in the Dominican Republic (104), which fell 12 places compared to 2016; and Panama (50) and Honduras (96), which fell 8 positions in the same period. Argentina (92) is surprising as the country that improved the most compared to the previous year when it increased 12 positions, while Trinidad and Tobago (83) advanced 11 positions and Nicaragua (93) 10.
Globally, Switzerland heads the Global Competitiveness Report 2017-2018, followed by the United States and Singapore.
The 2017-2018 report ratings were built on national and international agency statistics and the World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey of more than 14,000 entrepreneurs around the world.