Although Costa Rica is on the list of economies that made progress in the facilitation of business last year, the effort was not enough and the country fell 2 places in the Doing Business 2017 index, presented on October 25th by the World Bank.
The progress of the country regarding business climate outperformed all Central American countries and others like Uruguay. However, Costa Rica dropped from position 60 to 62 among the 190 countries evaluated, because other countries implemented more reforms.
The indicators with the highest ranking for Costa Rica were: access to credit (position 7), availability of electricity (position 27), property registration (position 52) and taxes payments (position 62).The country also stands out in the category of cross-border trade.
On the other hand, the country exhibited very poor performance in protecting minority investors (position 165), setting-up new business (position 125), contracts enforcement (position 125) and resolution of insolvencies (position 107).
Costa Rica is one of the latest examples of the introduction of a system of secured transactions that allows entrepreneurs to take advantage of movable guarantees for a loan. More than 40% of small and medium enterprises consider the lack of funding as a barrier for economic activity.
On the other hand, the level of national digitization, specifically in relation to cross-border trade, has shown to have a significant impact on economic growth.
Globally, Doing Business is headed by New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark. The Leaders in Latin America are Mexico, Colombia and Chile.