Despite reports of slow growth in Costa Rica’s business sector, those operating under the franchising regime grew by 12.7 percent, according to the National Franchise Center, part of the Costa Rican Chamber of Commerce.
President Luis Guillermo Solís said that Costa Rica would present its application to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in June 2015, during remarks following a meeting with the organization’s president in Mexico on Sunday.
Cargill is hiring 300 people for a new shared-services center in Costa Rica that will provide support to 50 operations across the Americas. Another company, Concentrix, is looking to hire 150 workers at its call center.
Owners of the Europa Hotel & Casino and Hotel Radisson’s Casino, located in San José, announced they would close the businesses and lay off 250 staff members due to high operating costs, the group's attorney, Hugo Navas, said.
Brightstar Corp., the world's largest wireless services distributor, on Monday opened a new shared services center in Costa Rica, from which the company will offer technical support for their operations in several countries.
The U.S.-based company Motif last Friday announced the closure of its customer support call center in Heredia, north of the Costa Rican capital. The news was confirmed in a press release signed by local manager Kaushal Mehta, stating, “[The closure] was due to a change in the customer base served by Motif from its Costa Rica facilities.”
Foreign Trade Minister Alexander Mora said that Costa Rica’s economy and offerings have changed since the 2002 agreement was signed, noting that the service sector, like call centers and off-site financial services, were not covered in the agreement.
The president has a difficult backdrop to the pro-business narrative he planed to tell on this trip as the longshoremen strike enters its sixth day and seven former public officials go on trial for corruption in a canceled gold mining concession to a Canadian company Monday.
Municipal officials in the Alajuela canton of Orotina have asked the U.S-based Georgia Tech Foundation to conduct a feasibility study to determine whether conditions exist for the central Pacific community to begin hosting large foreign companies looking to relocate to Costa Rica.
