Because of flaws in the estimates of costs of the work, in Costa Rica the Comptroller's Office declared unviable the tender to build a sports center, supposedly valued at $40 million.
In July 2016, the Solis administration announced explicitly that they were preparing to tender, at the beginning of 2017, the construction of a 25,000 square meter aquatic center and a 36,000 square meter sports center in San José, for a total cost of $40 million.
A new information platform aims to identify the main disadvantages faced by companies that transport goods through the region in customs and paperwork management.
The Central American Economic Integration Secretariat (Sieca) presented the Trade Incidences Platform, which will compile information on the disadvantages that companies have in the areas of customs, transport, sanitary procedures, phytosanitary, import or export.
In Costa Rica, an action of unconstitutionality filed almost three years ago is preventing the construction of a customs post on the border with Nicaragua, which would allow cargo transportation to be spared a distance of 160 kilometers.
Although the government has the $12 million needed for the final construction of the border post, where a temporary container has operated since 2013, the unconstitutionality action filed by the environmentalist Alvaro Sagot, is preventing the project from progressing.
With 19% endemic poverty, 10% open unemployment and 40% informal employment, and some of the highest electricity rates in the region, Costa Rica is opposed to $1 billion in clean energy investments.
EDITORIAL
By Jorge Cobas González
Meanwhile, the bureaucracy of state-owned companies continues to prescribe first-world remuneration, and continues to protect its privileges following ECLAC development concepts from the middle of the last century, which are utterly out of place today.Because Costa Rica does not have the investment capacity or know-how necessary for the development of latest generation renewable energy projects, even though it has all of the necessary primary conditions: sun, wind, thermal energy.
A savings fund, housing loans, expenses for recreation and bonuses, scholarships for children, and restaurant services for employees of the state and the monopolist hydrocarbons distributor of Costa Rica, are financed through the prices paid by consumers, even by the poorest.
A key factor in economies´competitiveness is the unrestricted movement of the available human and material resources, and this is where the customs integration of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador falls very short.
EDITORIAL
Jorge Cobas González Director of CentralAmericaData.COM
Salvadoran industrialists claim that with the presidential veto of the administrative simplification law, the country has lost a valuable opportunity to improve the already deteriorated business climate.
EDITORIAL
With the veto of the Administrative Simplification Act, the Salvadoran government is sending a clear message to the business community and to society in general: There is no interest in paving the way for the private sector to generate more jobs and, consequently, more wealth and socioeconomic development.
The Government of Guatemala plans to delegate to the United Nations Office for Project Services the supervision and execution of road works valued at more than $500 million.
The fate of road projects essential for the development of Guatemala could be as bad as some of those in Costa Rica, which have also been delegated to the United Nations Office of Projects (UNOPS).See "Challenges to the work of UNOPS".
"After two years the results are not the expected and, in fact, delays in the projects correspond to the typical obstructions and slow management that we are used to with public entities."
EDITORIAL
The actions of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) never cease to amaze. Its representatives in the country not only set out an impossible series of obstacles when the Comptroller General of the Republic requested to review the file on the contract for the new bridge over the Virilla River, on route 32, but now, a week after the request was made, UNOPS is ignoring the Comptroller's order.The entity had established a period of 24 hours for the delivery of the information.
Institutions such as the UNOPS, which supposedly come here to do what the locals can not, should be paid per piece of work for they finish, and not allowed to justify their failures with the same old excuses.
EDITORIAL By Jorge Cobas González
An entrepreneur earns when his business is successful.If it fails to capture a minimum market share and then maintain it, the investment made is lost, and the monthly income established by the performance of its business activities is also lost.Employers charge for their work and earn profits only while the company is successful.The same is true of private-company employees: their wages are tied to company earnings and profits.
On the Nicaraguan side everything is ready for cargo transported to and from the port of Limon to save 160 kilometers, through the customs post of Las Tablillas, but endless red tape is preventing works from starting in Costa Rica.
The Legislature granting approval for a loan to finance the work, completion of administrative procedures, the holding of a tender to hire a project manager who must then then tender the work internationally, are all of the steps that have to be completed to just to get work started at the customs post in Las Tablillas.
The mania for regulatory bureaucracy which feeds its own existence is taking away flexibility in the use of resources in the economy, slowing development.
EDITORIAL
It will be impossible for Central Americans to make progress if every new business activity has to be authorized by a public official.In the region the practice is not that you can do anything that is not forbidden, but rather the general culture indicates that you can only do what the State authorizes you to do.
The Federation of Chambers of Commerce has highlighted problems with certificates of origin under trade agreements in the region with other countries and in particular with the one signed with Mexico.
From a statement issued by the Federation of Chambers of Commerce of Central America and the Dominican Republic:
During a regular meeting held on August 26 in San Jose, Costa Rica, the presidents of major business associations grouped under the Federation of Chambers of Commerce of Central America and the Dominican Republic (FECAMCO) agreed to the following:
One bright spring morning a garden flourished gloriously and everybody wanted flowers. John said "I deserve 10" and the gardener gave him 10 flowers. "I want to take 11" said Peter, and 11 were handed over to him. "I demand 12" protested Manuel, and he got 12. "I want 13" shouted Joseph, and he received his 13 flowers. A lot of people called out their demands and got what they asked for. In the end there was only one somewhat wilted flower left that was given to a mute person with no name. And the gardener was acclaimed for his generosity.
But the following spring the garden produced much fewer flowers, in spite of this, John tried to take his 10, Peter his 11, Manuel his 12 and Joseph his 13 flowers. "That is what corresponds to us," they shouted. "It is our right" they claimed. And they hired a lawyer who filed a lawsuit to force the gardener to deliver what belonged to them by "acquired right". And the judge, who was Manuel, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
The real entrepreneurs and CEOs do not need a state official, who will never be an entrepreneur, to tell them how to run a company and increase revenues.
EDITORIAL
In Costa Rica, the government continues to believe that state officials can show employers how to do their job and how to generate wealth.
Having failed in its task of promoting favorable conditions in infrastructure, training and availability of human resources, access to credit and facilitating paperwork for the creation and growth of private enterprises, swift and effective commercial trade justice, the pachydermic state apparatus in Costa Rica continues to create bureaucratic organizations to "develop production" and obliterates others that yesterday were touted as the miracle food for the country's development. The new invention, this time from the Solis administration, is the Productive Development Agency, for Innovation and Added Value which of course already has a corresponding and always imaginative short name: FOMPRODUCE.