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.