Imports of Electronic Gadgets up 67% in 2007
by Rod Hughes
If you are in the business of importing electronic gadgetry, you are in the right business at the right time in Costa Rica. Equipment such as the mp3 and mp4 music and video reproduction gadgets, cell phones and digital cameras topped $78 million (dollars, not colones) last year, according to Banco Central figures.
This figure is up 64% over 2006 and reflects not only the fast-moving electronics boom but the fact that, demographically, this is still a young country despite the slowing of the birth rate over the last several years. (To the uninitiated, walking down the street and seeing every third persons with his/her hand to his ear, one would think the country was in an epidemic of earaches.)
Yolanda Fernandez, corporate relations chief of WalMart of Costa Rica estimates that demand is up 200% in the last two years. Grupo M marketing managers Mario Hernandez says that especially among young people, electronic gear is a “very strong fashion and necessity these days. And, I daresay, it’s not going to soften any time soon.”
Both agree that the kids have to have the fastest and latest on the market and they want it now. But partly, it is because of the ease, convenience and capacity of sophisticated hardware. “What can be better than to take a photo and decide immediately if it’s good or bad?” asked Hernandez, “Or, why download compact disks if an mp3 gives me a lot of music in a tiny apparatus?”