December 21, 2007

Central America's Center-Left: Guatemalan President-Elect Alvaro Colom (l) spoke yesterday at Casa Presidencial in San José after a meeting with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to discuss the environment, Central American integration and bilateral relations between their countries.

Watching Your Back: Tourist Police Marjorie Jiménez, left, and Alexander Gil patrol downtown San José. Crimes against tourists have dropped since their small, but growing police force took to the beat.

Costa Rica's nascent Tourist Police force this week marked its first year on the beat with a second graduating class – and the release of figures showing a decrease in crimes against foreign visitors.

Tourists in Costa Rica have long been seen as easy prey for thieves. But despite the record total of foreign visitors—more than 1.9 billion last year—reported incidents of crime are going down, said the Public Security Ministry.

The most notable decline was seen in the provinces of San José, Guanacaste and Limón.

“(Reports) also declined in Alajuela, Heredia and Puntarenas,” said Tourist Police Chief Kattia Chavarría in a statement.

Those areas make up the bulk of the beat patrolled by the 225-strong force.

Total reports by tourists of crimes, such as muggings and home and vehicle break-ins, went down from 5,450 in 2006 to 4,038.

In Cartago, however, such reports increased 6%, Chavarría added.

But the reports decreased by 36% in San José province, almost 34% in Guanacaste, over 33% in Limón, 22% in Alajuela, 13% in Heredia and 2.5% in Puntarenas, she said.

These figures “tell us that thanks to the measures taken by the Tourist Police deployed throughout the country, especially in areas with a higher concentration of foreigners, have been effective…which has brought calm to visitors,” said the police chief.

Earlier in the week, the Tico Times asked for tourist crime stats from the Tourist Police and the National Security Ministry but the newspaper was told no such figures existed because police reports do not distinguish whether the foreign victim was a visitor or a resident.

-Tico Times

The debt has fallen eight percentage points of gross domestic product (GDP) in the past two years, Costa Rica's Finance Ministry reported. Next year will see renewed efforts to renegotiate part of the debt in order to lower interest rates and push back payment deadlines.

Finance Minister Guillermo Zúñiga said that in 2006 Costa Rica's debt dipped down 3.5 percentage points and in 2007, another 4.5 points, putting the debt equal to 46% of GDP.

Costa Rica's GDP is close to $21 billion.

“There are a couple of positive factors at work like the national reserves, stable interest rates in Europe and a downward trend in the United States, and now we could take advantage of the situation to make our expensive debt cheaper,” Zúñiga told the news agency ACAN-EFE.

Meanwhile, November ended with a fiscal surplus of almost $59 million thanks to a 27.4% rise in income, the Finance Ministry told The Associated Press, adding that next year's results would be even better.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently forecast Costa Rica's economy to grow 5% next year. “That's not bad,” Zúñigo told the AP, describing the IMF's prediction, “but I'm more optimistic.”

-Tico Times

Just as Costa Rica's leaders boast of world reputed green policies and ambitious goals toward “carbon neutrality,” its neighbor Nicaragua's carbon footprint grows ever deeper.

Nicaragua emits six times more greenhouse gas than last year because of the destruction of forests left by Hurricane Felix, say environmental experts.

Amado Ordóñez, associate director of the Humboldt Center in Nicaragua, said that because of its poor handling of its forests Nicaragua “has become a high carbon-emitting country.”

In September Felix leveled more than 700,000 hectares of forest in Nicaragua, Ordóñez noted at a press conference Tuesday in Managua.

He lamented that the government had not begun a major reforestation process and seemed to have no strategy to rebuild the forests in the future, necessary to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.

-EFE

Arias Meets With New Guatemalan President,
But Declines Joining C. American Bodies

President Oscar Arias and Guatemalan President-Elect Álvaro Colom discussed the environment, Central American integration and bilateral relations at a meeting yesterday at Casa Presidencial in San José.

Arias said he would attend Colom's inauguration Jan. 14. He promised to cooperate with the Guatemalan president on environmental issues by sharing Costa Rica's own experience.

But he Arias reiterated that Costa Rica is uninterested in joining bodies of Central American integration such as the Central American Court of Justice and the Central American Parliament (Parlacen).

Colom said he respected that decision.

“Integration can take many forms. With each country going at its own pace and respecting the popular will, we will move toward a more united region,” he said.

-Tico Times and ACAN-EFE

‘Michael Clayton’ Well Done but Nothing New