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Meta
Autor: Writer
~ 28/06/06
Costa Rica is in the final stages of becoming certified to export chickens to the United States — Tico chicken farmers will likely be able to access the U.S. market in September, according to the daily La Nación.
In addition to the necessary U.S. certification, ratification of the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) would be necessary for Costa Rica to export chicken to the United States, which has the strictest sanitary requirements in the world.
Hong King, England, Israel and Canada are the only countries certified to export chickens to the United States, National Poultry Farmer Council Director Alejandro Hernández told La Nación.
Meanwhile, Honduras last week banned Costa Rican chicken imports after hundreds of animals in the Caribbean province of Limón were found to be carrying laryngotracheitis, a respiratory disease that affects birds but cannot be transmitted to humans, the daily reported.
Honduras will not import Costa Rican chickens until Central American health authorities visit Costa Rican chicken farms and factories to inspect sanitary conditions.
Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz responded to the ban by remarking that Honduras was overreacting by assuming that the chickens could have the notoriously deadly avian flu. Costa Rica has strict biosecurity measures in place and is completely free of avian flu, he told La Nación.
-Tico Times
Autor: Writer
Moody’s Investor Services has changed its mind about Costa Rica and now rates the country as stable instead of negative.
The company issues ratings that reflect the interest rates foreign investors demand for government and commercial bonds all over the world.
Moody’s said that the country’s debt ratio had improved. The ratio is the amount of what a country owes compared to its gross domestic product or what it produces.
Costa Rica’s internal and external debt continues to grow, but so does its major exports. The Moody rating also probably reflects international investors confidence in Óscar Arias Sánchez, the new president.
Autor: Writer
The price of one liter of regular gas will increase from $.98 to $1.04; the price of one liter of super gas will increase from $1.02 to $1.08, and the price of one liter of diesel gas will increase from $.67 to $.74.
These increases will go into effect as soon as they are published in La Gaceta, the official government daily.
The National Oil Refinery (RECOPE) solicited these increases May 16 due to escalating crude oil prices on the international market.
-Tico Times and ACAN-EFE
Autor: Writer
~ 27/06/06
Viviana Martín, Technical Council of the Civil Aviation Authority (CETAC) president, explained that businesses are invited to submit proposals for a project to construct a new building at the airport.
CETAC hopes to have a 10,000-square-meter building with capacity for 1,500 passengers in place by mid-2009.
When the airport was inaugurated in 2002, it received 56,000 passengers per year, but traffic has grown considerably — 355,500 tourists flew into Liberia last year, the daily reported.
According to Martín, the new building will include a larger waiting area for passengers and space for more airlines, Customs, Immigration, boarding gates, stores and food vendors.
President Oscar Arias has called the situation at Daniel Oduber “urgent” and remarked that opening up the expansion project to private companies is the best option.
In the mean time, area hotels plan to build a temporary waiting area for passengers this year to relieve some of the airport’s congestion the until the new building is complete in 2009, according to La Nación.
Modernization and expansion of Juan Santamaría International Airport, northwest of San José, is also being managed by a private company, Alterra Partners, but the contract has been fraught with problems since a Comptroller General’s Office report questioned Alterra’s plans for financing the airport in 2003. International banks suspended $30 million in loans pending the resolution of the conflict.
- ACAN-EFE and Tico Times
Autor: Writer
~ 22/06/06
Vannessa Ventures Ltd. said Wednesday that a feasibility study on its gold mine should be finished later this month or next.
Crucitas open pit gold mine near the Nicaraguan border is being developed by Vannessa’s wholly owned subsidiary, Industrias Infinito S.A.
The company outlined its timetable as it announced that it had borrowed $1.5 million to pay for completing the study and for mine machinery.
The controversial mine has generated an extensive amount of paperwork. The company said that all infrastructure has been defined and the cost estimated, but a more favorable agreement with the local authorities to improve the access road requires that new estimates be prepared. Environmental protection and monitoring programs have been designed and estimated, together with a closure plan, and these are in the process of a
final review, the company said.
The loan was from Exploram Enterprises Ltd. and is payable on demand after Aug. 31. The agreement is secured by the assets of the company. The money also will go to buy grinding equipment.
The feasibility study is being carried out by Micon International Ltd., the company said.
The company said that an agreement with the local electrical utility has been negotiated to supply power.
Because the company uses mercury to leach gold from crushed rock, the project has raised the concern of local environmentalists who fear the chemical will seep into the nearby Río San Juan. However others see the project as a way to bring jobs to the northern zone.
Autor: Writer
~ 21/06/06
By Amanda Roberson
Tico Times Staff
Costa Rica’s exports registered $3.3 billion during the first five months of this year, marking a 17.2% growth over the same period last year, announced Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz at a press conference yesterday.
“Export growth continues to be strong, and it is very likely that we will reach our goal of 10-12% growth this year,” said Ruiz, who attributed export increases to the agricultural and industrial sectors.
Agricultural exports grew 17% over last year, and the strongest products were bananas and pineapple. Meanwhile, the strongest products in the industrial sector were integrated circuits, electric microstructures and modular circuits.
The exported products that showed the most growth during the first five months of the year were ethyl alcohol, which grew 85%, and precious metals, which grew 76%, said Foreign Trade Promotion Office (PROCOMER) Director Martín Zúñiga. Electric components for microprocessors, bananas, textiles, pineapple, coffee and medicine also showed significant growth.
The United States continued to be the main importers of Costa Rican goods, accounting for 41% of total exports, while the Netherlands came in second place, accounting for 7.8% of exports, followed by Hong Kong (5.6%), Guatemala (4.2%), China (3.8%), Nicaragua (3.6%), Panama (3.4%), Honduras (3.3%) and El Salvador (3.2%).
The markets showing the most growth so far this year were South Korea, Vietnam, Suriname, Portugal, Haiti, Canada and the Netherlands, all of which showed more than 64% growth.
Autor: Writer
~ 19/06/06
By Katherine Stanley - Tico Times Staff
As President Oscar Arias in Europe urged other countries to adopt measures to reduce the arms trade and reward peace-seeking countries, some legislators back home are claiming that the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA), which Arias supports, would allow other countries to import illegal weapons to Costa Rica.
Supporters and negotiators of the agreement say this assertion is false, and that nothing in the lengthy trade agreement would prevent Costa Rica from upholding its current law banning certain weapons, or enacting even broader weapons bans in the future.
The agreement’s tariff schedules do establish rates for weapons that are illegal in Costa Rica, however, and this has led Elizabeth Fonseca and Alberto Salom, legislators for the Citizen Action Party (PAC), which maintains CAFTA should be renegotiated, to argue that the pact opens to door to the import of the weapons.
“What’s at the bottom of (the pact) is lifting tariffs that weigh on the arms trade,” Salom told The Tico Times this week. “There’s legislation that talks about the arms trade… but the treaty would supersede it.”
Pro-CAFTA legislator Janina Del Vecchio, who heads the commission that is de-bating CAFTA, denied this, saying the agreement does not grant any country the right to import arms, and includes a clause allowing any member country to take the actions necessary to ensure national security.
“Whether or not there’s a treaty doesn’t mean that a country… will take on a different position,” Del Vecchio told The Tico Times on Tuesday. “The law will be applied, and the law is very clear.”
Arias himself, asked about the issue last week before heading to Europe for an official visit, said the government will continue to regulate arms and added that his administration is “working on legislation to regulate even more and be more restrictive regarding the possession of arms,” though he did not provide further details.
What Does the Text Say?
The discussion is not a new one for CAFTA critics. The documentary “Costa Rica, S.A.,” which aired earlier this year on the University of Costa Rica (UCR) TV channel, included the statement that the trade pact would make Costa Rica “part of the international production of arms” and showed a page from the agreement that sets tariffs for rocket launchers and other weapons prohibited here (TT, March 17). Law student Luis Roberto Zamora even filed a suit before the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV) claiming CAFTA violates the constitutional right to peace, though justices rejected the suit last week, according to Sala IV spokeswoman Sonia Villegas.
A look at Costa Rica’s 352-page tariff schedule reveals rocket launchers are indeed on the list, as well as other banned weapons such as flame-throwers, grenade and torpedo launchers, cannons, sables, swords, bayonets and “arms of war” – in between the provisions for tariffs on percussion instruments and airline seats.
However, according to the U.S. Embassy, it’s common practice for trade negotiators to set tariffs for any product under the sun, even those that are unlikely ever to be traded by the signatory countries, in an attempt to avoid having to return to the negotiating table should a country’s laws or product offerings change.
“There’s nothing about a trade agreement that forces a country to import or export any product,” U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Elaine Samson told The Tico Times. “The reason that list of products is included in the tariff schedule is that the other countries in the agreement may want to export some of those products, so it needs to be explicit which products have zero tariffs and which products don’t. It doesn’t mean any of the countries are obliged to import them.”
But as one might expect with an agreement that fills thousands of pages, the discussion doesn’t end there. In the debate between the PAC legislators and Del Vecchio, which has played itself out in recent weeks on the opinion pages of the daily La Nación, Fonseca and Salom also point to Annex 3.2, where Costa Rica and the other countries that signed the agreement with the United States in 2004 – the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua – listed national legislation that would restrict imports or exports.
Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras included their national arms-control legislation on their lists. Costa Rica, along with the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, did not, mentioning only laws that control the import or export of crude oil, hydrocarbons, coffee, ethanol, bananas and certain types of wood.
Salom argued that if countries are indeed free to control the import of arms to their country, “why did Guatemala and El Salvador and Honduras safeguard themselves with their internal legislation… and Costa Rica, the civil country, didn’t? Interesting.”
Del Vecchio, Samson and Foreign Trade Vice-Minister Amparo Pacheco maintain that leaving Costa Rica’s Law 7530, which prohibits the import of certain types of arms and gives the Public Security Ministry the authority to control the import of weapons, has no effect on the country’s ability to apply the law. According to Samson, nothing would keep Costa Rica from strengthening its arms-control law or even deciding to ban guns altogether, thanks to a clause in the agreement protecting national security.
Article 21.2 states that “Nothing in this Agreement shall be construed to preclude a Party from applying measures that it considers necessary for the fulfillment of its obligations with respect to the maintenance or restoration of international peace or security, or the protection of its own essential security interests.” This means there’s no limit on member countries’ ability to ban weapons, Samson said.
“Costa Rica didn’t include (the issue) in Annex 3.2 because it considered that unnecessary,” Pacheco, who was also a Trade Ministry official during the CAFTA negotiations, told The Tico Times Wednesday in an e-mail. “Under CAFTA, as is the situation today, the manufacture, use and trade of arms of war are prohibited (by Law 7530), and for the import of any other type of permitted weapons, authorization or a permit from the Public Security Ministry is necessary.”
She added that the agreement’s only effect on the trade of weapons is that if the Public Security Ministry authorizes the import of arms permitted under Law 7530, such as pistols or revolvers, the current 15% tax on those products would be gradually eliminated.
A Firm Stance for Peace
As this debate continued at home, Arias, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for authoring the Central American Peace Plan during his first term as President (1986-1990), spoke before the International Labour Organization (ILO) June 8 in support of what he’s dubbed the Costa Rica Consensus, an initiative through which developed nations would offer debt forgiveness as a reward developing countries that reduce investment in weapons.
“It is time that the international financial community reward not only those whose spending is orderly, as it has done till now, but also those whose spending is ethical,” Arias told those gathered at the organization’s annual conference.
He described military spending in Latin America as “a new arms race” that has impoverished its citizens.
“In 2004 Latin American nations spent a total of $24 billion on weapons and troops, an amount that represents an increase in real terms of 8% over the last decade and an amount that has grown alarmingly in the last year,” he said. “Saying we do not have the money to educate our children is like a poor man complaining of hunger as he throws his bread to the birds…the resources Latin America has dedicated to military spending have in the best cases contributed to the poverty of those who bore the initial costs, and in the worst cases have ended up outright suppressing them.”
He pointed to the abolition of Costa Rica’s army in 1948 and the fact that the country’s children “do not know soldiers or tanks” as “a route that we wish all humanity to follow.”
The day before his Labour Organization speech, Arias asked representatives at a U.N. ministerial summit on armed conflict to support an anti-arms trade treaty. The treaty would require signatory countries to stop arms transfers to nations, groups or individuals if there is reason to believe the weapons will be used to violate human rights or international law.
Since taking office, Arias – who used his Nobel Peace Prize money to found the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, an advocate for arms control – has also attacked arms proliferation through his Public Security Minister, Fernando Berrocal, who announced last week that the ministry plans to take an inventory of the country’s weapons and destroy all Costa Rica’s semi-automatic military weapons (TT, June 9).
Luis Alberto Cordero, Executive Director of the Arias Foundation, responded to the PAC legislators’ assertions with an opinion piece of his own in La Nación, defending his organization’s founder.
“The free-trade agreement between Central American and the United States doesn’t limit the Costa Rican government’s power regarding the trade or import of weapons,” he wrote. “Therefore, Dr. Arias is not incurring any contradiction of principles.”
Autor: Writer
The agreement is part of plans by ICE, the state-run electricity and telecommunications monopoly, to improve national networks’ ability to manage international phone calls and accommodate the growing number of links with Internet service providers, the statement said.
Working with GSM, the institute also hopes to improve broadband technology such as Metro-Ethernet, wireless business networks and ADSL technology.
The contract must now be approved by the Comptroller General’s Office before it goes into effect.
-Tico Times
Autor: Writer
The Asamblea Legislativa will be getting a proposed rewrite of the country’s liquor law that seeks to end the secondary market in licenses and create more permits for restaurants and tourist locations.
The set of proposals is being promoted by Evita Arguedas Maklouf, leader of the Movimiento LIbertario in the assembly. She said that she hopes a new law will end the corruption that is caused by excessively complex procedures.
The current liquor law dates from 1936 and is antiquated, she said.
The proposed laws would call for a 10,000-colon payment to obtain a liquor license. That’s about $20. In San José where no new liquor licenses have been granted since 1987, such permits are rented to new establishments by private parties for as much as 70 million colons a year, some $134,000, according to Ms. Arguedas. The original owners, in turn, pay very little each year to the municipalities.
Ms. Arguedas referred to the secondary market as a black market, but the activity of renting liquor licenses is legal. She correctly noted that there are some persons in the country who own licenses, rent them and live well on the proceeds.
At the same time, the municipalities frequently only get a few thousand colons a year in license renewals.
However, sale tax is collected on the liquor transactions.
Autor: Writer
~ 16/06/06
Another icon has fallen. The Sala IV has ruled that guaro produced in Costa Rica by a government monopoly may face competition.
The ruling, released Thursday by the press office of the Poder Judicial, was a narrow one and related only to sugar cane liquor called guaro with an alcohol content of 30 percent.
The action was brought by an importer of alcoholic products three years ago. The magistrates, in their decision, ruled that two decrees were unconstitutional. The decrees were issued by the then-Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería and gave the exclusive right to produce guaro to the Fábrica Nacional de Licores.
The Fábrica Nacional produces Cacique guaro with that percentage of alcohol. The decision would not seem to apply to other products of the Fábrica Nacional nor to other guaros with different alcoholic content. The liquor company produces a range of gins, vodkas and other spirits.
Guaro is called aguadiente de caña in other Latin countries.
The magistrates said that the production of guaro was a legal activity that does not damage the public morals, the public order or the rights of third parties. Consequently the government had no right to give the Fábrica Nacional exclusive right without an objective reason.
Because of the abundance of sugar cane, guaro is bootlegged extensively in Costa Rica and purchased by people who want to avoid taxes on alcohol.