The dollar exchange has dropped in the last couple of weeks and continues on a downward trend, leading to cheaper imports, however, retailers say they will not be dropping the prices of good and services until their current inventories run out.
The drop may not occur for two weeks or even a month or more, well past Mother’s Day, which is celebrated in Costa Rica on August 15 of every year.
The president of the Cámara de Comercio de Costa Rica (CCCR) – Chamber of Commerce, Francisco Llobet, confirmed to CRHoy.com the tendency to keeping higher prices for the coming weeks.
Llobet said that when the dollar exchange went up we didn’t see prices increase overnight. The same – no immediate change in prices – is expected that now that the dollar exchange has dropped.
The logic is that if the dollar exchange drops, so should the prices. However, that is not the reality, because there is high uncertainty, entrepreneurs not being sure if the exchange will continue to drop or rise again the following month, say the experts.
At the beginning of the year, the dollar exchange was ¢500 colones, slowly climbing to ¢560 by the end of March (first quarter), then dropping in the past weeks, trading yesterday at ¢545.
