QCOSTARICA – Despite its financial constraints, Costa Rica is one of the countries in the world, dedicating more resources to support the public sector.
Compared with the nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group where entry is by invitiation, Costa Rica is only surpassed by Denmark and Norway, according to a report by that organization.
The country spends approximately 13% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to pay its bureaucrats, while other nations like Japan, South Korea, Germany, the United States and France, invested a smaller percentage in 2013, according to a report released this year.
However, this does not mean that public employees in Costa Rica are better paid than their counterparts in the OECD, said Xiomara Rojas, secretary of the Costa Rican Independent Union of State Workers (Sindicato Independiente de Trabajadores Estatales Costarricenses), since there are significant wage gap between central government employees and universities (such as the Universidad de Costa Rica – UCR and the Universidad Nacional – UNA) and autonomous institutions (such as ICE – the Instituto Costarricense de Electricida and the AyA, the water and sewer utility, for example).
Government spending on remuneration is not because the country has the largest state payroll says the OECD, since the bureaucrats hardly represent 15% of workers, while in Denmark, Norway and the Czech Republic for example, these they represent more than 30%.
Source: Centralamericanlink.com
It’s been clear since Oscar Arias was the President, that it is the amount of the salaries, bonuses, pensions and other benefits paid to Public Sector employees that is way out-of-line, not the number of Public Sector employees in Costa Rica. The quoted statistics are proof of this. Costa Rica pays more to its Public Sector employees than other countries, which are much more affluent than is Costa Rica.