QCOSTARICA – During the session of the Governing Council (meeting of Cabinet) held within the framework of the tour to the Brunca Region, President Rodrigo Chaves signed nine decrees to regulate Law No. 10,234, promulgated in May, “On strengthening territorial competitiveness to promote the attraction Investments Outside the Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM)”.
The Brunca region is located in the South Pacific of Costa Rica and is made up of six cantons: Pérez Zeledón, Buenos Aires, Coto Brus, Osa, Corredores and Golfito.
These regulations will provide legal certainty so that users can take advantage of the powerful public policy tool established by this law. The intention is to encourage more investments to settle in these areas, taking advantage of the 11 new measures created, which were specially designed to improve territorial competitiveness.
“These decrees make it possible to formalize and execute the Law on Free Zones outside the GAM, to attract more investment and generate new jobs outside the GAM, this directly benefits the Brunca Region and encourages the reduction of the gaps that exist between the zones inside and outside the Greater Metropolitan Area”, indicated the President of the Republic.
Indiana Trejos, minister a.i. of Foreign Trade, highlighted that the Government prioritized this work, very aware of the urgent need to settle the historical debt that, as a country, it maintains with the regions outside the GAM.
She commented that “it is essential to reduce the development gaps ‘between the coast and the rich’. Along with trade, investment is a very powerful engine to raise people’s quality of life, to transform it. In just a few years, entire communities completely change around ‘tractor’ investors who, with their immense strength, open up and make available, especially to those who live in these places, spaces of diverse opportunity and vast benefits.
“I am referring, among other things, to sources of direct and indirect formal employment, and to new knowledge and technologies. We want this to be multiplied throughout the country and that families living in these areas can enjoy all these advantages. That is what these decrees are for, to motivate companies to invest and create these spaces for growth outside of the GAM”, she concluded.
Decrees
The decrees make it possible to implement, from now on, the law that was approved in May 2022 to promote new investments in Free Zones outside the GAM, through benefits and incentives. The companies that make investments in these regions will have special conditions for the payment of social contributions during the first years of operation.
Three decrees were also signed with which the rules for the single investment window are reformed, which simplifies investment throughout the country so that companies have a single place where they can process them, in a centralized and more agile way.
In the elaboration of this collection of decrees, coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Trade (COMEX), with the support of the Foreign Trade Promoter of Costa Rica (PROCOMER), more than 30 institutions and around 80 public officials interacted.
