QCOSTARICA – The Solis administration is relaunching a bill which aims to set the maximum allowable interest rate for any type of loan. Although the so called usury rate is part of Costa Rican law, it is not specified how much the rate should be.
Because of this, “… the Costa Rican financial market offers various loans with very high rates that could be punishable, but the gap in the law does not allow the courts to determine what is a high or low rate.”
Welmer Ramos Gonzalez, Minister of Economy Trade and Industry, told Crhoy.com that “… The bill seeks to regulate primarily what is the maximum interest rate that can be applied to all loans, regardless of who grants them or under what conditions. It is from this point that a major social problem is generated, one factor is that there is asymmetric information which is biased against the user and on the other side is the fact that there is a great deal of financial illiteracy within the population. ”
“… The bill establishes criteria for defining a usurious loan, based on the surplus on a target limit on effective interest rates charged in any credit relationship. ”
Source: Crhoy.com
