QCOSTARICA – From January to October of this year, Costa Rica’s exports grew 26% in relation to the same period of the previous year.
This was announced by the Costa Rican Foreign Trade Promoter (Procomer) this Friday, while reporting on the record figure of just over US$12 billion.
As a result of the pandemic crisis, Costa Rican exports barely grew by 0.3% in 2020 and now there is an increase of 26%.
In 2017 it was 8%, in 2018 it was 6%, in 2019 it was 2%, in 2020 it was -0.3% – a product of the crisis caused by the pandemic – and in 2021 it was 26%.
“Costa Rica continues to show the world that it has a robust, resilient export sector and that it has a quality and diversified offer,” said Foreign Trade Minister Andrés Valenciano.
“These data please us when we see that the recovery of the sector has gradually come to fruition, and that the country has many opportunities abroad,” he added.
According to Valenciano, exports are growing at double digits in all regions of the world: North America grew by 28%, Central America by 27%, South America by 62%, the Caribbean by 32%, Europe by 18% and Asia 28%.
The fastest growing
Medical devices are the goods or products that showed the highest growth throughout this year with more than US$1.16 billion, followed by syrups and concentrates for soft drinks (+ US$125 million), pineapple (+ US$110 million), electrical cables (+ US$85 million) ) and iron or steel bars (+ US$70 million).
Among the products that also achieved growth are: palm oil (+ US$66 million), tires (+ US$48 million), glass containers (+ US$47 million), rolled iron or steel products (+ US$38 million) and fruit juices and concentrates (+ US$37 million).
“When analyzing the main export products from January to October of this year, we can see that they belong to different sectors, which makes us see the importance of not depending on few goods in international markets,” said Pedro Beirute, General Manager of Procomer.