Mercedes Agüero R. - La Nacion

Despite growing complaints from users, the ICE can do nothing about the barrage of text messages users receive.  According to the company, the majority of these messages come from another cell phone and in general they are sent to random numbers.

“There is nothing the user can do, particularly since on many occasions it is their own fault. They have left their number in marketing databases of different companies. “  said ICE.  ARESEP also stated that there is no regulation that permits them to sanction those who send these messages.

66 Authorized Companies

There are companies that are authorized to send mass messages, but only to those who have opted in.  If they send junk messages, their license can be revoked.  Milena Schroeder, general manager at Servicios de Mercadeo Móvil Multimedia S. A, complained that although their contract prohibits them from sending mass messages, there is no regulation that prevents others from doing it. “this marketing technique is very effective when properly applied, however right now it  is a big mess.”

This company offers traffic reports for 9 colones each and a daily horoscope for 50 colones each.

The government has already prepared an offer to propose Costa Rica as the ideal location for the Meso American refinery project.  The project was outlined last December in the meeting of Presidents and Heads of State in Cancun, Mexico.  360 million barrels of fuel would be produced daily in the refinery, along with natural gas and electricity.

The project is worth $ 8 billion and should be operating in 2012. Roberto Dobles, Minister of Energy and the Environment stated that Costa Rica has many advantages: political stability, stable economy, human resources, central location, and infrastructure for petroleum on both coasts.

Costa Rica would see 15,000 temporary jobs during the construction of the refinery, 1500 permanent jobs operating the refinery, and 4500 indirect positions are expection to be generated by activities related to the refinery.  Dobles guaranteed that the refinery would not harm the environment.

This year Costa Rica exported 102.1 million cases of banana, 13.5 million more than the 88.6 million it exported last year.  Each case weighs 18.14 kilos.

Jorge Sauma, Manager of CORBANA said the increase is due to 3 factors:

• Producers improved productivity from 2,155 cases per hectare in 2005 to 2,400 cases this year.
• The government implemented a plan to support farms that were failing, but were not considered as unable to produce. The $50 million plan was implemented with government funds, but paid back by the farmers from the exports.
• The climate this year was good for production

33,000 Costa Ricans are employed by the banana farms, and these export figures place it in second place, behind Intel, as Costa Ricas largest export industry.

The Finance Ministry calculates that the public and private sectors will pay a total of 280 billion colones in 2006. 58 billion will go to employees in the Legislature, Omsbudsman’s Office, the Judicial Branch, the Elections Tribunal and the Comptroller General’s Office.

Another 56 billion colones will go to employees of municipal governments, public institutions and other entities.  The 676,165 workers in the private sector will get 168 billion colones, according to the Costa Rican Union of Chambers and Private Enterprises.

As employees eagerly await the end of year Christmas bonus due to all employees in Costa Rica, many are asking themselves how much they are owed.  Or maybe you are an employer who needs to pay someone?

Eugenio Solano, director of Labor Relations at the Ministry of Work and Social Security explained that every public and private employee must get an aguinaldo regardless of their job description, hours or time worked with the patron.

The amount is calculated over the average monthly salary paid from December 1st 2005 to November 30th 2006.  The total amount from each monthly amount is added and divided by 12. Here are some handy examples:

Jose Pablo

Jose Pablo earned 110,000 as a gardener in December of 2005 and received a raise to 120,000 in January.

December 110,000 + 1,320,000  (11 months X 120,000 each) = 1,420,000 colones

1,420,000 colones divided by  12  = 119,166.65 colones due

Maria de los Angeles

Maria de los Angeles only worked part of the year as a day care teacher.  From April 1st to to June 30th for 110,000 per month and from July 1st to November 30th for 120,000 per month.   The total of these payments should be divided by 12.
April May June - 330,000

June - Novemeber (5 months) - 600,000

930,000 divided by 12 =  77,500 colones

Payment in Kind

A special case is those of workers who receive additional compensation besides their paycheck.  (Food, lodging, free products or services) In this case the calculation is the same, but to the monthly salary you have to add in the value of the compensation they received. The law states that this is to be 50% of the monthly salary in the case of housekeepers, in the absence of a specific agreement for a higher or lower amount.

 Important Facts:

• The payment must be made during the first 20 days of December.
• Regular time and overtime must be included.
• Workers who end the contract before December should receive the aguinaldo too.
• Anyone who works over one month should receive it.
• Workers cannot lose the right to their aguinaldo, but they cannot claim it after six months have passed from the end of the contract.
• Workers who are on sick leave or who take a leave of absence without salary do not get credit for any payments made (like workmen’s comp).  This is because the payments are not salary, they are a “subsidy”.  The exception is for maternity leave, which is treated as a salary.

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With an average increase of 9%, the Marchamo will be paid by each of the 830,000 vehicles circulating in Costa Rica.  The INS adjusted the obligatory premium by 8.9% and also partially eliminated the subsidy for buses and motorcycles that was charged to car owners in the past.  A sample amount:

Here you can find out how much your vehicle owes, by typing in the license plate.

INS Amount to Pay

ARESEP will be asked to approve a 30% rate hike for the 500,000 clients of the water company AyA. Each family will pay on average and additional 1350 colones per month. A average family that now pays ¢4500 per month would pay ¢5850 (For 24  cubic meters).

The minimum rate for up to 15 cubic meters would rise from ¢2,300 to ¢3,000.

For businesses, an average user would see the bill rise from ¢20,500 to ¢26,650 (33 cubic meters ).

Ricardo Sancho, executive president of AyA, said that the hike is necessary due to inflation and would only cover operating and administrative costs.

James Phillips, Planning Director, added that the rate hike contemplates inflation from 2005, all of 2006 and 2007.  The last rate hike went into effect in January of 2005 and was 6 %

According to a study by PhishTank, 110 sites Costa Rican Internet sites are dedicated to commit frauds against web surfers.  The company made an analysis of 3,678 pages Web, in the past month of October, and determined that these 110 places try to rob money to from the people through deceit.

These pages, Costa Rican pages imitate or clone sites for payments, purchases or of banks. This technique is known as “phishing” in English.  Its aim is to obtain numbers of banking credit cards, accounts and the security codes. With this information, the delinquents enter the true sites and they rob the client.

Christopher Richarson, of the Direction of Networks and Systems of RACSA, explained that these sites send electronic mails asking to them the people who enter to update the data bases. “As they are cloned pages, people think that they are in the real one and give up personal information, accounts and security codes”, commented Richarson.

For this expert in Internet, the important thing is not to respond this type of email, since no banking organization in the country asks for an update of its data bases by electronic mail.

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias wrapped up his visit to Chile saying that he was impressed by that country’s growth and that he is convinced that Costa Rica should learn from their example in two areas - opening state monopolies to competition and in offering public works to bidders under the concession model.

Arias credits these two factors to fast economic growth in Chile, 6% anually in the last few years, and also to the reduction in poverty, which went from 38.5% en 1990 a 18.8% en el 2005.

“We must look to the south, to learn from your success.  It is not an accident that you are the most developed country in the region; it is due to your successful integration into the global economy. We are just beginning to go in this direction. ”, Arias said to Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, following their meeting.

Edited by Amanda Roberson, Tico Times Staff

Fast, continuous access to the Internet is crucial to Costa Rica’s development and productivity, and a new “broadband barometer” will help gauge the country’s connectivity, said Production Minister Alfredo Volio yesterday during a press conference to announce an initiative launched by the computer company Cisco in collaboration with the Production Ministry and the High Technology Advisory Commission (CAATEC).

This “barometer” is a count of how many homes, businesses, educational facilities and government offices in Costa Rica have a broadband Internet connection, defined as permanently available with a speed of 128 kilobytes per second or faster, explained CAATEC director Ricardo Monge. In Costa Rica, there are four types of broadband connections available from the state-run Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) and Radiográfica Costarricense S.A. (RACSA): ADSL, cable modem, RDSI(ISDN) and phone lines exclusively for Internet.

As part of the initiative, technicians are interviewing businesses and getting information from ICE and RACSA to count the number of broadband connections in Costa Rica every six months and make the results public, Monge explained. Additionally, a goal has been set for Costa Rica to have 325,000 broadband connections by 2010, meaning 7% of the population would have access to this technology.

According to the first count, taken from December 2005-June 2006, 1.5% of Costa Ricans, or 65,609 people, have access to a broadband connection, a rate inferior to other countries in Latin America including Mexico (2.2%) and Chile (5.6%).

The initiative also includes plans to work with businesses, schools and government institutions to help them get more broadband connections.

Volio said he has seen first-hand the disadvantage farmers and small businesses face without access to technology. He told an anecdote about a recent visit to the southern Caribbean coast, where he discovered that a group of about 200 farmers shared one public telephone that had been out of service for quite some time.

“They were unable to get vital information necessary for their business,” Volio said.