President Arias Sees Chile as Rode Model for Costa Rica.

Surprised by Chile’s fast development, that’s how President Oscar Arias finished his official visit to this country.

“There’s a lot to learn from Chile; they can teach us,” said Oscar Arias of his experience in Chile.

He said we should learn from them in two ways:

1. Commerce liberalization and
2. Public works concessions

These two measures seem to be the cause of their economic growth of a 6% in the last few years and the reduction of poverty from a 38.5% in 1990 to an 18.8% in 2005.

“We should look south and learn from what they have achieved. Its not coincidence that they happen to be the most developed country of the region, it’s because you’ve accepted globalization of world economy” said Arias to Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile.

President Arias visited La Moneda Palace, the Congress and the Supreme Court of Justice and received the city keys from the City Hall.

Advantages and Disadvantages.

“We should learn from Chile in free trade agreement matters, that’s what I discussed with Chile’s President”, explained Arias.

The best way to help us would be by sharing what they see as good and bad of the opening of commercial borders and how they’ve helped their most vulnerable sectors with a complementary legislation.

During his visit to the Congress, Arias was impressed when informed that approval for free trade was done by consensus between six parties. Chile has already signed 51 trade agreements with Europe, USA and currently with Japan.

Arias talked with Bachelet about concessions given for public works. She said that concessions were not only important for different services like hospitals, roads, airports etc, but the cost of opportunity of building them in 4 or 5 years or waiting 30 or 40 years for the government to do them.

In Costa Rica’s case President Oscar Arias says we have to check the Public Work Concession Law to see which projects we can consider.

Our thanks to Maricel Sequeira and our friends at La Nación – Costa Rica’s largest Spanish circulation newspaper for their permission use this article.

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.