According to the Treasury Minister, Guillermo Zuniga, the United States potential economic slowdown will not hurt the country of Costa Rica. Costa Rica has become a large international property market in recent years, with many of its investors coming from UK or other European countries.
The United States, however, supplies the country with more tourists than anyone else and is the country's largest trading partner. Both of these facts seem to place Costa Rica in a precarious situation, in which a United States slowdown or recession could cost the country some of its valuable benefits to investors.
Yet, according to Guillermo Zuniga, who is the country's Treasurer, "From a point of view of national finances this situation (meaning US Economic slump) hits us at a good moment. I don't see any large dislocations in public finances."
The country's central bank has limited the growth likelihood for Costa Rica to 3.8% for 2008, which is down from 6.8% from 2007.
Many things have helped Costa Rica to improve its economic stance, including improved tax collection methods. Yet the surge in tourism from around the globe has helped to make the location a prime investment opportunity for overseas investors from the UK, and the US.
