Costa Rica Real Estate And Living

COSTA RICA will forever be associated in the world's imagination with both the grano de oro (golden grain, a.k.a. the coffee bean), which wakes up half the world every morning, and the yellow fruit that became synonymous with Central American backwaters ("banana republics"). Historically, the country's primary exports have been agricultural, principally coffee so well suited to the rich volcanic soil and mild climate of the Central Valley and bananas, which thrive in the wet coastal lowlands. Of the two crops, coffee is perhaps most tied up with the national identity, but bananas are more lucrative. After Ecuador, Costa Rica is the second largest banana exporter in the world. Pineapples are another important crop.

Though farming is still vitally important, the country's economy is now much more diversified. Cattle ranching began in the early colonial period, and in the 1960s many more Ticos invested in beef cattle. By 1975, there were almost as many cows as people in Costa Rica. These "locusts with hooves" have not been kind to the environment or the economy. Demand for beef waned in the 1980s fast food chains up north were ordering less as North Americans became more health conscious. Forest converted to pasture causes drought in many regions (like Guanacaste), and ranching puts people out of work it takes fewer people to work a herd then to work fields planted in crops. Ticos still see cattle as a profitable and prestigious investment. Over two thirds of agricultural land (and 40 percent of the national territory) was pasture in 1994; only 7 percent was devoted to crops.

INDUSTRY AND TECHNOLOGY

Starting in the 1990s, electronic components, furniture, and pharmaceuticals (among many others) became important exports. Multinational pharmaceutical companies—such as Abbot Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson and Johnson, Colgate-Palmolive, Monsanto, and Pfizer—have branches here. Tech giant Hewlett Packard employs at least 4,000 people here in Costa Rica; many of them provide tech support in English to callers from the United States and Canada. The textile industry has also grown by leaps and bounds, from 14,000 workers in 1986 to 43,000 in 1996. In sonic years textiles bring more foreign exchange than the all-important banana.

Tourism, the "industry without smokestacks," also exploded in the 1990s, with the number of foreign tourists going from 376,000 in 1989 to more than a million in 2000 and then to about 1.5 million in 2004. Tourism has now surpassed all other moneymakers and is the number-one source of income for Costa Rica.

Another recent and dramatic change to the economy came when Intel, based in Santa Clara, California, began to build assembly plants here in 1997. The big daddy of foreign investors, Intel has three sprawling plants in Costa Rica, which churn out a third of its worldwide production of computer chips and provide thousands of jobs. In 1998, the company's exports accounted for 8 percent of the country's GDP (gross domestic product; in Spanish. PIB, for producto inferno bruto). In 2005, Intel opened a new financial services center in San Jose. For her-ter or worse, more and more America-based companies are out- sourcing jobs to the "Switzerland of Central America."

THE GAMBLING INDUSTRY

Some commercial sectors in Costa Rica are more open than they are in other countries. Gambling, for instance, is legal in Costa Rica, and is big business. There are an estimated 200 sports-books, or online betting services, operating in Costa Rica, employing about 10,000 people. Row upon row of workers sit at their computer terminals, speaking into telephone headsets, taking calls from all over the world and arranging bets in dozens of languages. Callers to the sports-books bet on sports, of course, but they also bet on elections and even on the romantic lives of movie stars.

Sports-books are attracted to Costa Rica in part because there are fewer regulations to comply with here, and those that exist are often not enforced. There's more than a whiff of underworld in this business; a few sports-books have been linked with mob activity in New York. It's also unclear how long sports-books' commitment to Costa Rica will last—probably until the Costa Rican government starts imposing more taxes on gambling proceeds. Or until the long arms of the U.S. agencies that battle gambling begin to regularly reach down this far. Already some online gambling operations here have been tar­geted by U.S. officials, who say that as long as these sports-books take money from U.S. customers, they fall within the jurisdiction of U.S. laws. But de­spite U.S. legislation aimed at prohibiting the credit card and electronic fund transactions U.S. players often use to settle online bets, most Costa Rican sports-books seem to be going strong.

ECONOMIC STABILITY

On balance, Costa Rica is still a good place to live and do business. It has one of the most stable economics in all of Latin America, a fact that draws many foreign companies here, further anchoring the economy.Top foreign investors include Intel, Dole Fruit, Chiquita, Abbott Laboratories, Baxter Healthcare, Hanes Underwear, Scott Paper, PriceSmart, Payless Shoes, Mc-Donald's, and Bechtel.

Compared to its neighbors, Costa Rica has a fairly high per capita gross do­mestic product (GDP), a figure often used to measure a country's standard of living. In 2005 Costa Rica's per capita GDP was USSI 1,100, while Panama's was US$7,200 and Nicaragua's US$2,900. For comparison to wealthier, more developed countries, the U.S. per capita GDP for the same year was US$41,800 while Canada's was US$34,000.

Sure, there are problems. Devaluation of the colon is as sure as afternoon rain in the green season, averaging about 10 percent per year. The country is battling a large foreign debt, trying to impose IMF-mandated austerity measures while continuing to provide the social services its people have come to expect. Free education and health care are priorities for Costa Rica, and they don't come cheap. But for the moment, at least. Costa Rica is still erring on the side of maintaining a high level of health and education services, while offering incentives to foreign businesses so that they might come here and provide jobs for Ticos.