Costa Rica: Day Three

Our second day in Costa Rica started with a breakfast briefing on the topic of "Doing Business in Agricultural Products in Costa Rica." Representatives were present from the Agricultural Attaché, Banco de Jose, and Arce Compos Customs Agency.

The representative from Banco de Jose reported that General Electric (GE) just bought 49.9% of their bank. This was perceived as a strong signal that GE believes that being involved in Central America is critical.

We learned that the customs office in Costa Rica was created recently, 1995. They are working to implement electronic transmission of all document which will allow for minimal response times once all customs documents are filed.

They told us that 50% of the imports to Costa Rica come from the US and the other 50% from primarily Chile and Europe. Costa Rica does business with many multi-national corporations that are based in the US. Their advice to multi-nationals is to abide by the customs laws and know them. There are fines and penalties associated with non-compliance.

Our next experience was briefings on soy and meat products. We were told that Costa Rica exports $28 million in meat products and imports $5-$6 million. Cattle is raised in the northern region of the country, but this has diminished over the past few years. The slaughter of cattle is referred to as "sacrificing" in Costa Rica. They reported that last year 45,000 heads were sacrificed as compared to 300,000 heads in 1995. Forty two percent of the meat goes to the US and the remaining 48% is used in Central America.

Soy is a very big business for Costa Rica. Covac Company was the only company providing soy products in the 1980s. Now there are a variety of producers and soy is used to make sausage, bacon, and many other products. Costa Rica has undertaken a great crusade to educate their market about soy products. Soy milk and soy drinks are very popular. The US is embarking upon the same educational journey. Starbucks uses Silk soy milk in their drinks and more and more soy products are being seen in US grocery stores.

We then headed to CoopendIa, an ornamental plant facility. This is a coop between Purdue University and private enterprise. Their focus is on the eradication of pests and bacterial influence on plants. They have pursued this focus because Costa Rica is the largest importer to the US of ornamental plants and they are also unintentionally the largest importer of pests. Because there are so many pests in the soil, plants are only allowed to be imported in saw dust.

Finally, we ended our day at Pipaso, a poultry producer. In addition to exporting fresh chicken to McDonald's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken, they also provide cat and dog food and animal feed. To produce the pet food and animal feed they use large quantities of grain and corn. There was obvious interest between the delegates from Indiana involved in grain and corn production and the executives from Pipaso.