QCOSTARICA – The Unión Costarricense de Cámaras y Asociaciones del Sector Empresarial Privado (UCCAEP) – Costa Rican Union of Chambers and Associations of the Private Business Sector – once again sent a letter to the authorities of the Banco Central de Costa Rica (BCCR) – Central Bank- expressing its concern about the dollar exchange rate.
This week the sale of the dollar reached its lowest point in seven years. This morning, Thursday, March 9, the official exchange reference rate by the Central Bank is ¢¢548.49 for the buy and ¢554.28 for the sell.
At the commercial banks (state and private) – ‘en ventanilla’ in Spanish – the exchange rate his Thursday morning ranges from ¢535 to ¢543 for the sell and ¢555 and ¢563 for the sell.
This represents a drop of more than ¢30 in the last month and ¢45 so far this year.
In addition to businessmen, the country’s tourism and export sector claimed losses due to the behavior of the dollar.
Jorge Luis Araya, Executive Director of UCCAEP, reiterated that employment in the country is put at risk.
The Central Bank, months ago, had asked the sectors and the population for peace of mind regarding the exchange rate.
Economists point out that the low dollar exchange is blamed on an abundance of dollars in the Costa Rican economy that is attributed to the reactivation of tourism and greater exports.
What many economists also agree is that an exchange rate like the current is not sustainable for the national economy because there are clearly hard-hit actors such as tourism, free zones and exporters.
Experts believe that the dollar exchange will rise again over the next six to twelve months, but consider it hardly from the almost ¢700 colones we saw in June 2022.
