A court decision removed the obligation to collect commission on early fund recovery or to enforce minimum periods of investment for those funds.
The measure had been adopted by the Supervisory Board of the Financial System (CONASSIF), amending the General Rules on Mutual Funds Investment to prevent investors without the appropriate profile from entering into long-term funds.
The Securities Commission (Sugeval), is preparing regulation to enable venture capital funds to conduct public offerings.
In Costa Rica there are several venture capital funds, but they are private and cannot perform public offerings. The regulation to allow them to do it could be ready in a couple of weeks.
“José Rafael Brenes, CEO of the Costa Rican Stock Exchange, explained that Sugeval has the regulation almost ready, and could be ready in a few weeks”, reported Nacion.com.
In Costa Rica, investment funds grew 16% in 2009, in spite of losing almost 10% of their investors.
During the past financial crisis, the Costa Rican market turned out to be more stable than international markets, making it a relatively safer place for storing capital. Because of this, assets managed by investment funds grew to $2.48 billion.
However, the crisis affected small local investors, who were forced to abandon their investment funds.
In Costa Rica, 55% of the total in investment funds is in extreme liquidity instruments.
The fear caused by the financial crisis has prompted investors to abandon growth and income investment funds which typically offer better returns and put their money in highly liquid, low return funds, where the money can be withdrawn in less than 24 hours.
According to the article by Esteban Ramírez Castro, published in elfinancierocr.com, this has caused low levels of performance similar to that obtained with bank certificates: "Money market funds in colones remained close to 7% for the last 30 days, two points down from the inflation projected for 2009. As a reference, overnight certificates from the Central Bank with a one-day term are paying 7.75% and even 30-day rates can go as high as 9%."