Costa Rica President Carlos Alvarado, his environment minister, Carlos Manuel Rodríguez and the Minister of Public Security, Michael Soto, have an ambitious goal for what will be the President’s first international tour.
Rounding out the Costa Rica delegation in Washington will be Adriana Murillo, Foreign Policy Director of the Foreign Ministry; and Román Macaya, Costa Rica’s ambassador to Washington.
Alvarado and Rodriguez will be in Washington D.C. on June 12 and 13, to ask the Pew Foundation, National Geographic and Conservation International to donate a cool million to Costa Rica to undertake sustainable fishing projects.
According to Rodríguez, the money would be used to promote transformations in fishing activities in coastal areas, specifically in tuna fishing.
Rodriguez explained that in the country this product is fished by an international fleet that has licenses for it for 60 years. He said that although these companies collect around US$60 million per year, they pay less than US$1 million to the country. He added that there are suspicions that 50% of the tuna is caught illegally.
The minister said the US$1 million donation would be the first part of other financial cooperation plans that they want to reach with these three international organizations.
But fisheries is not the only item on the President’s agenda.
Carlos Alvarado will also meet with U.S. Senate and House representatives, as well with officials of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American Dialogue.
Among the scheduled meetings for Alvarado are with Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the IDB to discuss related to public finances, citizen security, crime prevention, and de-carbonization of the economy and Senator Marco Rubio, who chairs the Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, as well as the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights and Global Women’s Issues.
Soto, for his part, will be taking part in high-level meetings with officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
In a statement, Casa Presidencial (Government House) said that the tour will be “austere”, without specifying the cost it will have. “This working visit aims to consolidate the cooperation of that country (the US), multilateral organizations and NGOs on priority issues for our administration as citizen security, combating organized crime and the de-carbonization of our economy,” said the statement.”
The Executive Branch describes the trip as “key”, as the first of the Alvarado Quesada administration to the United States.
The delegation will return to the country on the morning of June 14. That day, in the afternoon, Alvarado plans to meet with the former presidents of Costa Rica.
