Medical products have become the second largest export from Costa Rica, behind microprocessors and related computer items, reported the English-language weekly The Tico Times last Friday. And the latest such factory to open here is the breast implant firm opened last week by the California-based Allergan firm.

In a bylined story in the print edition by Tico Times staff writer Blake Schmidt, the paper said President Oscar Arias drew a hearty laugh as he cut the inaugural tape by saying, “…Of many businesses around the country I’ve inaugurated, none manufactures a product that not only brings happiness to women but especially to us, the men.”

Allergan, which claims the fastest of California’s medical product manufacturer, joins nearly two dozen firms in that field in Costa Rica, a figure that has quintupled in the past decade, reported the paper. Last year such firms exported $600 million in products, a 13% jump over the year before.

Medical manufacturing, in fact, has outgrown such traditional agriculture-based exports as bananas, coffee and pineapple on which the country’s economy was based only a few short years ago.

Last year, reported Schmidt, the country’s overall exports grew a healthy 17% to $8.2 billion. And President Arias has set his sights on $18 billion as his goal for the Administration, a goal that would demand an annual 25% export increase over the next three years, a goal he says is feasible if the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States is ratified by Costa Rica’s Congress.