Costa Rica Call Center Blog

The work of the Costa Rican agency was compared with 213 other agencies, and positions Costa Rica as the country with the best performance in the management of investment attraction in Latin America and the Caribbean under the national agencies category.

San José, Costa Rica, May 13th, 2009: The Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency (CINDE), organization that attracts foreign direct investment to Costa Rica, was ranked the best national investment promotion agency in Latin America and one of the top ten worldwide agencies with the best performance, according to the “Investment Promotion Benchmarking” conducted by the Investment Climate Advisory Service (FIAS) of the World Bank Group.

With a score of 74% and showing an improvement of 34 percentage points in comparison with the first edition of the study made in 2006, CINDE is very close to the Austrian investment promotion agency, named the best of the world with a score of 89%.

The top 10 national best-practice agencies in the promotion of foreign direct investment to their countries is comprised by Austria, Costa Rica, Sweden, Germany, Canada, Latvia, France, Spain, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

According to Carlos Griffin, Representative of FIAS, the good performance of the Costa Rican agency is a very important element to Costa Rica in terms of global competitiveness in the attraction of foreign investment, especially within the complicated world economic situation.

“In these tough economic times, with prospects for new investment seeming scarcer, getting the basics of investment promotion right could not be more important. And CINDE’s large improvement in the study could not be more timely. It has risen from a score near the global average in 2006 to join the group of top 10 national IPIs in 2009, which includes long-time best-practice agencies like Invest in Sweden Agency and UK Trade and Investment, as well as this year’s top-ranked IPI, Austrian Business Agency, indicated Griffin.

Quality information, appropriate managing and providing the right service
The study conducted by FIAS between March and September 2008, examined the quality of the information and service that 213 promotion agencies- 182 national and 32 sub national- provide to the investor when handling specific projects as well as through their web sites.

According to Gabriela Llobet, CINDE’s Director General, the results obtained are very satisfactory and also represent a challenge to permanently improve the work done by CINDE.

“We are very proud that Costa Rica appears in this study as one of the countries with the best performances, and furthermore to obtain a position within developed worldwide leading countries that assign a larger amount of resources to the promotion of foreign direct investment. We consider that CINDE’s focus on the sectors in which Costa Rica shows competitiveness as well as our timely reply have been key. These results represent a challenge to us in order to continue to improve every day”, indicated.

SOURCE: World Bank

• Company provides HR services to 13 countries in Latin America

Peter Lynt, vice president for integrated operations of IBM, said the company will hire 1,200 additional employees over the next two years.

Lynt said graduates hired professionals, but also give opportunity to young people about to conclude his career in Management, Finance, Human Resources, Marketing, Engineering, Economics and Accounting.

IBM came to the country in 2004 and provides outsourcing for companies from 13 countries in Latin America the US and Canada.

From its headquarters in Global Park in Heredia, the company performs payroll, expatriate support, online learning, selection and recruitment, and support for retired people.
These efforts are conducted in four languages (Spanish, Portuguese, English and French) to 325,000 employees in America.

Lynt stressed multilingual skills of Costa Ricans, but urged the Government to increase investment in English from primary and encourage more young people to study engineering and economics.

Source: Nacion.com

According to the study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, A new ranking of the worlds most innovative countries, Costa Rica holds the top position in Latin America.

While developed countries continue to top the list of innovators in the medium term, poor business conditions will snap their innovation capacity. Japan, Switzerland, the United States, Sweden and Finland remain at the top of the index.

The high rank for three small wealthy European states reflects the fact that their economic, social and political conditions favor innovation. In addition, there are specific factors that stimulate innovation, including highly skilled labor forces, a long-standing policy support for ICT and R&D, and specialization.

The slippage of the US confirms the gradual erosion in recent years of the country’s traditional position as the world’s technological leader—a trend we expect to continue. To some extent, the erosion in the US’s position reflects the fact that other countries are catching up.

China is rising strongly in the global innovation performance ranking. China now leads the world in the number of people engaged in science and technology. The country accounted for 6% of the number of scientific articles published worldwide in 2005, up from 1.6% in 1995, and it is ranked fifth globally. University graduates with degrees in science and engineering represent 40% of the total, almost twice the OECD average and far above the 15% recorded in the US. Much of China’s FDI will continue to target innovation-intensive sectors, and foreign companies have been opening research centers in the country.The prospects for China are not entirely positive; it also faces barriers to innovation. Weak protection of intellectual property (despite improvements in recent years) stands out.

The report includes innovation predictions for the next five years, and more gains for the emerging world are expected.

Souce: Economist Intelligence Unit