The Costa Rican-North American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) shared its criteria regarding the ten topics that should be considered as a priority during the first 100 days of Carlos Alvarado’s new government.

“Working hand in hand with the government has always been one of our characteristics, proposing strategies and actions directed to strengthening the competitiveness of the country. As we have done with past administrations, from AmCham we acquire the commitment to promote and support projects that improve the conditions to generate employment, improve citizens’ security and strengthen legal security”, commented Elias Soley, President of AmCham.

The ten topics identified by AmCham are:

1. Reduction of Fiscal Deficit and High Government Expenses: Promote a more comprehensive reform that includes substantial solutions to control and cut public expenses.

2. Infrastructure and Mobility: Define the priority projects that quickly impact our competitiveness, specially those that can resolve the transit problem in the Metropolitan Area.

3. National Security: Increasing the capacity of the different police bodies, allowing them to complement each other to generate more efficiency and capacity to face the growing criminality wave.

4. Bringing Down Costs of Electricity: Costa Rica has one of the highest electricity rates in the world which represents a problem for our competitiveness and requires urgent solution.

5. Exchange Rate Regime: It is important to carry out a study to determine the loss of competitiveness due to the exchange rate regime in comparison to other countries we compete with in exports with our main commercial partners and establish an adequate rank in which the currency should depreciate to recover that competitiveness.

6. Dual Education and Better Quality of Diversified and Technical Education: A legal frame must be approved to motivate companies to implement training in dual modality. Germany is leader in this program and has an almost null youth unemployment rate.

7. Employment and Education: There is a structural gap between the supply and demand; our education system is not generating enough professionals and technicians in the disciplines required by local and foreign companies that settle in the country. The articulation of the educational system in relation to the demand of the market is imperative to eliminate the need of companies in importing human talent. This can be achieved increasing the efficiency and impact of the education administration without needing to necessarily invest more in this area.

8. Increase Trade Opportunities: Initiate a multisector dialogue to evaluate the pros and cons of an integration with the Alianza del Pacifico. AmCham considers hat this integration would positively impact 86% of the productive sector and it is urgent to evaluate this opportunity.

9. Battling Illegal Commerce: Give more resources to the Fiscal Control Police and the Frontier Police through the redistribution of some selective taxes.

10. Innovation: Better inter-institutional articulation and creation of mechanisms to improve the use of resources destined to promote innovation.