By Blake Schmidt - Tico Times Staff

In the dark of night, the government sent hundreds of National Police to intervene early yesterday morning in a costly slow-motion port worker protest at the nation’s two biggest seaports.

Saying the protests had cost the government $5 million due to backed-up trucks and boats waiting to move cargo through the Caribbean port of Moín, Public Security Minister Fernando Berrocal announced yesterday at Casa Presidencial that 260 national police took over the port at 1:15 a.m., resulting in one arrest.

Workers at Moín and the nearby, smaller port of Limón had been protesting since Monday the government’s plan to privatize the management of the ports. Port employees had been employing tortuguismo, slowing down their productivity to a minimum.

Leroy Perez, spokesman for the Union of Caribbean Port Workers (SINTRAJAB), called the intervention “illegal” and “arbitrary,” and said the union would be meeting with other unions yesterday afternoon to consider strikes that could begin today.

There was also a police presence in the Limón port yesterday, though there were mixed reports as to when police intervened in that port and to what extent.

When asked by the Tico Times why the operation took place at night, Berrocal said the decision to intervene was made late Wednesday night at Casa Presidencial, when authorities felt the costly protest could not go on any longer.

“The port was totally paralyzed,” Berrocal said. He added that only one person, a forklift operator, resisted the intervention, and was arrested.

Perez decried the arrest of the forklift operator, Luis Gran.

“In no moment did he violate the law. (Security officials) said he was working too slow. He refused to work faster, and so they arrested him,” Perez told the Tico Times in a phone interview from Limón.

“That’s new to me. I thought police were supposed to regulate violence, not make people work,” Perez said, speaking while visiting Limón neighborhoods in a caravan trying to rile up support for a protest.

Police presence continued through the day at the ports and throughout Limón yesterday. Berrocal said this presence would be maintained as needed.

“We’ve been able (to police the ports) so far, and we will be able to (continue)… I hope,” he said.

The Ministry of the Presidency, Rodrigo Arias, called the intervention “peaceful.”

“The port is operating completely normally as of today,” Arias said.

The clash between workers and the government comes more than a month after the central Pacific port of Caldera privatized its management (TT, Aug. 8), laying off hundreds of government workers, and after the Arias administration announced privatization plans at the Caribbean ports.

Pérez said the union opposes such privatization. According to the union representative, SINTRAJAB submitted its own plan to modernize the Caribbean ports which would not entail privatization.

However, as was made apparent by the late-night intervention, the government is not willing to budge. At yesterday’s press conference, Inter-Institutional Coordination Minister Marco Vargas said the government will hold firm in its plans to concession out the administration of the ports as part of a Limón development project under way since the previous administration. Arias echoed Vargas’ position, calling JAPDEVA’s demand not to privatize the Atlantic ports “unacceptable.”

The protest drew fire all week from the administration and the Union of Private-Sector Chambers and Associations (UCCAEP), which represents 41 private business chambers. UCCAEP called Wednesday for the government to “immediately intervene,” and decried “millions” in losses for exporters, particularly those whose products include perishable fruit and vegetables, due to the protests.

“The harmful practices not only affect businesses by delaying exports… but it also puts the labor security of thousands of Costa Ricans who work in the private sector at risk,” said UCCAEP president Rafael Carrillo.

Vargas said he hopes the ports can be privatized within four years. He explained that most workers would be given severance pay, and 30% of them could get retirement benefits. According to Vargas, layoffs could be mitigated by the “ Limón Port City ” project, a $70 million undertaking with funding from the World Bank and the government of Japan, designed to renovate the city.

He said the project could create thousands of jobs in the long term.

Consolation Prize

The workers were also protesting that the government has not yet paid workers $860,000 in extra pay as agreed upon in a recent collective convention. This week’s port slowdown sent the administration scrambling to give union workers the extra pay, settling the three-year-long struggle between port employees and the government.

Despite union requests for labor benefits to be covered by tariffs, the Public Services Regulatory Authority (ARESEP) didn’t include the payments in its 2003 tariff expenditures, which set off a bitter battle between the union and the government, according to ARESEP spokeswoman Carolina Mora.

The government decided to pluck funds from the massive budget surplus of the Atlantic Port Authority (JAPDEVA), which JAPDEVA officials say is locked in a bureaucratic bungle.

However, ARESEP said in a statement Monday that JAPDEVA can decide on its own how to spend its $19.3 million budget surplus.

JAPDEVA has accrued the surplus from tariffs on goods coming through the ports during the past 10 years. This amount now represents nearly half of the institution’s annual budget.

“By law, a public institution can’t have profits… It’s the JAPDEVA administration’s fault (that such a surplus exists). An institution can’t continue to gain a surplus that they don’t reinvest,” said Mora.

Mora said that due to the growing surplus, ARESEP is looking into the possibility of reducing tariffs on goods at the Caribbean ports.

However, JAPDEVA spokesman Israel Ocontrillo said JAPDEVA has been trying to reinvest its surpluses, but that those plans are often steeped in bureaucratic limbo.

“We have to request permission to reinvest. It’s very bureaucratic to work here,” Ocontrillo told The Tico Times, adding that to use the funds, JAPDEVA’s expenditures must be approved by the Comptroller General’s Office as well as the Federal Budget Authority.

Ocontrillo said JAPDEVA expected to have paid the workers by today.

More than 250 national police officers took over the Caribbean port of Moín early this morning to put an end to three days of protests by port workers using tortuguismo, or slowing down their productivity to a minimum, to oppose government plans to privatize the port’s management. These protests have cost the government $5 million in lost goods, Public Security Ministry Fernando Berrocal told the press this morning.

The transport minister said Wednesday that construction of the San José-Caldera highway would begin in November at the same time that work begins on reconstructing the San José-San Ramón highway.

The minister is Karla González, and the San José-Caldera route will reduce the travel time from the Central Valley to the Pacific coast.

The bridges for the Caldera highway have been in for years, but the Pacheco government was unable to get the roadway built due to challenges to the concession law.

Minister González said that land is being expropriated and rights of way acquired for both projects, and the work is advancing. In addition, the utilities companies, such as the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad and the Instituto Costarricense de Acueductos y Alcantarillados have signed on to the project and will relocate their services.

The projects are concessions, and the company doing the work is Autopistas del Valle. The concessions are for 25 years. The Caldera route is an extension of the Autopista Próspero Fernández which runs along the south side of Parque La Sabana. The highway is complete through Ciudad Colon. The new stretch will be 78 kilometers and will cost $140 million. The San Ramón project is 65.8 kilometers and costs $170 million.

Both projects have been anticipated by real estate investors who expect appreciation of properties as a result of the new highways. The November starting date was first proposed by the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes in May, but obtain rights-of-way proved to be more work than anticipated.

Gas prices are being cut again. The agency that controls prices said Monday that super was going down 14 colons a liter to 499 and that regular was going down 16 colons to 469.  There are about 520 colons to the U.S. dollar.

The Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos said that the decrease reflected a dip in price on the world market, no hurricane threats to the U.S. Gulf Coast and anticipation that the U.S. economy is slowing.

The new prices will take effect after the decree is published in the official newspaper, La Gaceta, probably by the end of the week.

Wal-Mart Costa Rica announced Friday that it plans to build a new $12-million Hipermás store in the western San José suburb of Escazú, according to a statement from the company.

Like the other four Hipermás stores in Costa Rica, this store will sell everything from home appliances to clothes to groceries, much like Wal-Mart stores in the United States and around the world.

Last September, Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the United States, bought a one-third stake in the Central American Holding Company (CARHCO), which comprises 363 supermarkets throughout Central America, including Más x Menos, Palí and Hipermás stores (TT, Sept. 30, 2005).

Wal-Mart plans to open the Escazú store in the middle of 2007. It will be built on a 26,500-square-meter lot and will have a 6,500-square-meter sales area, according to Wal-Mart Costa Rica corporate affairs director Alquileo Sánchez.

The new Hipermás will create 600 jobs, the statement said, and will be the first Hipermás to be modeled after Wal-Mart stores in the United States.

-ACAN-EFE and Tico Times

By Blake Schmidt , Tico Times Staff

As the government prepares for a long-overdue nationwide assessment of property values, a lack of municipal resources promises to gum up the process, officials say.

Municipal impotence, combined with a proposed law that would give the government power to fine property owners who declare values below their assessed value, have the real estate industry reeling.

“Municipalities assign very general values. They don’t go out to the properties to assess them … they valuate them from their desks,” said Emilia Piza, president of the Costa Rican Chamber of Real Estate Agents.

Marietta Montero, director of the Technical Norms Organ of the Finance Ministry, said municipalities not only lack human resources to go out and assess property values, but the information they rely on is riddled with errors. They base tax rates on that flawed information.

“They don’t have qualified engineers … and they bring in errors from the public registry. They are using legal information of a property instead of the physical information (to assess value)” Montero told The Tico Times.

Montero said that the Finance Ministry hopes to begin a new process of assessing property values as soon as November, a process that could be finished by the end of 2007, she said, adding that approximately 70% of properties in the country have not been appraised in nearly a decade.

What’s it Worth? Officials hope to soon launch a project to valuate properties nationwide. Tico Times Photo

She explained the government is in the process of contracting a Canadian company for a $1.4 million project to assess the real estate market in Costa Rica. The company – which has yet to be named – will be responsible for general assessment in which it redefines pricing zones and establishes price values in those zones. Then, Montero explained, it will be up to the municipalities to send appraisers out to each property in those zones and do individual property assessments.

But “very few (municipalities) go out and do a good valuation,” she said, adding that a law passed in 1997 put the responsibility of individual assessments in the hands of municipalities.

Vladimir Pérez, civil engineer for the Municipality of Golfito in southwest Costa Rica, said the municipality has barely assessed a third of the properties in the canton.

“We need to have the resources required to do the job,” he said. Nearly a quarter of all municipalities, including Golfito, don’t even have an office of property valuation as required by the law.

Every five years, property owners are expected to declare the value of their property. However, municipalities have the power to conduct an expert appraisal and levy property taxes based on that result.

The current property tax is 0.25% (¢2,500) per million colones per year (25 cents per $100).

A proposal in Congress, which is part of the Arias administration’s nine-part fiscal reform plan, will tax “luxury” properties valued at more than ¢100 million ($193,000), with a 0.25% additional annual tax on the value exceeding ¢100 million. The revenue would be put toward eliminating Costa Rica’s sprawling shantytowns.

Under the new tax proposal, the Finance Ministry would also be given the power to fine property owners who declare values below the assessed values, a measure that has enraged many real estate owners.

“The whole world will try to get a lower value on their house,” said property owner Arturo Lizano, who is also the former president of the Union of Private-Sector Chambers and Associations (UCCAEP), which represents 41 private business chambers.

Lizano called the luxury tax “a slap in the face to the middle class,” adding that with skyrocketing real estate prices, ¢100 million is no longer a luxury home. In a few years, it will just be a middle-class home, he said.

Montero said property owners have the right to challenge the assessed value assigned to their property.

She said a property owner can complain at the municipal level with the municipal office of valuations or to the Municipal Council.

At the national level, she said property owners can complain before the Administrative Fiscal Court or the Contentious Administrative Court.

Hotel owners, real estate developers, restaurants and other businesses raised $16,000 to repair the Calle Langosta road in Tamarindo, a beach town in the northwestern Guanacaste province, according to a statement from the nonprofit Pro Mejoras de Tamarindo Association. The money was used to repair 2.7 kilometers of the road, which runs from Tamarindo to the nearby town of Villa Real and is traveled by thousands of Costa Rican and foreign tourists daily, the statement said. The funds went toward 2,430 cubic meters of gravel to repair the road, and the Santa Cruz Municipality provided $10,000 for machines and labor, the statement said. Private donations were important in ensuring that the project continued as scheduled, said Jessica del Rossi, director of the association. “We found members of the community to be very cooperative,” Rossi said. “In general, we received a very positive response from our community.” Businesses that contributed to the road-repair project include Sueño del Mar, Iguana Surf, Tamarindo News, Villa Langosta Condo Association, ABC Real Estate and Restaurante Bistrot Langosta.

The tourism minister wants no part of plans to set up promotional agencies in Guanacaste and in Limón.

The measure came up for a vote Wednesday in the Comisión con Potestad Legislativa Plena Segunda. Members affiliated with the Partido Acción Ciudadana wanted to postpone action on the measures, a move that might have meant killing them. The move failed. Both Guanacaste and the Provincia de Limón heavily supported Óscar Arias Sánchez in the last presidential election and led to his victory over the Partido Acción Ciudadana candidate.

Tourism operators on both coasts want the independent promotional agencies to focus on their own areas.

The tourism institute has been weak in the promotional department. A $840,000 Web page has generated few reservations. The page has a traffic ranking of 157,752 according to Alexa, the Amazon.Com company that provides such services. It has been as low as 228,254. By comparison, The Tico Times today is 114,092, A.M. Costa Rica is 43,806. and La Nación is 9,375.  Yahoo is the No. 1 most visited site and MSN is No. 2.

Benavides also told lawmakers in his visit last week he did not want any competition with the tourism institute.  The institute collects a tax on every tourism hotel bill and other tourist expenditures.

Co-directors of the Costa Rican film “El Rey del Cha Cha Chá” (The King of Cha Cha Chá), featuring Mexican actor Damián Alcázar, announced yesterday that shooting of the movie is complete.

Co-directors Isabel Martínez, from Costa Rica, and Vicente Ferraz, from Brazil, said they are “very excited” about the project, which was completed on a very tight budget, but with “a lot of passion.”

The movie tells the story of Paco Jarquín, the 10 th commander of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua from 1970-80. Jarquín is hailed as a hero by some Nicaraguans and a traitor by others.

During the 1980s, Jarquín disappeared after an armed conflict with opposition forces along the Costa Rican border, but 20 years later, his wife found out he was living in the country and began searching for him.

The film shows how Jarquín gave up the revolution for his true passion, dancing the cha, cha, chá and teaching dance classes in San José, the co-directors explained.

Alcázar said he traveled to Nicaragua to interview former Sandinista commanders and army officials to research the historical context of the film.

The entire production crew of the film is Costa Rican, with the exception of Alcázar and film students from the Veritas University in the southern San José suburb of Zapote.

The project will now enter the phase of post-production, which will take place in Brazil and Mexico. Co-directors hope to screen it next June in San José.

The movie was filmed in Costa Rica and Nicaragua over a two-month period and cost $670,000 to produce. 

-ACAN-EFE

Hundreds of opponents of the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) saw Friday’s Independence Day holiday as a prime occasion to protest the agreement.

Protestors, including students and union leaders, marched peacefully behind the Independence Day parades in San José and gathered in the Plaza de la Democracia to speak against the agreement and President Oscar Arias, who supports it.

Protestors organized various cultural activities, including a concert with local musicians, to express their fear that the agreement would threaten the country’s individuality. Many also expressed concern that CAFTA could harm Costa Rica’s environment.

Jesús Vásquez, president of the High-School Teachers’ Association (APSE), said that on the anniversary of Costa Rica’s independence from Spain, all Costa Ricans should be aware that their country is “on a very dangerous track.”

“Today, surrounded by our national culture, we wanted to sound an alarm so that people will realize the dangers that come with this agreement and the polarization we are living through in Costa Rica,” Vásquez said.

Costa Rica is the only signatory country that has not ratified the agreement, which is being considered by a Legislative Assembly commission.

Meanwhile, President Oscar Arias addressed the nation Friday. His speech not only lauded the country’s achievements but also pointed out the hard work required for Costa Rica to get ahead, according to a statement from Casa Presidencial.

Costa Rica “is still not totally free because it remains wrapped up in old beliefs of former policies that, though they were effective at the time, have stopped serving the best interests of the country,” Arias said.

Costa Rica “has not gathered the force necessary to separate from the past those traditions and values worth conserving from those that have become heavy chains for the advancement of our society.”

Creating security among citizens, investing in education and implementing fiscal reforms are steps Arias said are necessary for the country to advance.

-ACAN-EFE and Tico Times