Beginning Nov. 29, Costa Rica will require that tourists from 18 countries in South America and Africa have an international certificate proving they have been vaccinated for yellow fever.

Happy Thanksgiving!
For a full list of restaurants serving Thanksgiving dinner today, check out the Thanksgiving Special Section in this week's print or electronic edition of The Tico Times.

Piano Concert
By Gabriela Arguedas performing works by Beethoven, Bach and Chopin, 8 p.m., National Theater, San José. Ave. 2, Calle 3/5. 

Surf Movie Premier
Premier of “Trilogy” surf movie, 8 p.m., El Cuartel, Barrio California, San José. Also in Tamarindo, Saturday, 8 p.m. Hotel Tamarindo Cala Luna Lounge Bar.

U.S. Embassy and Consulate Closed
In honor of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, the U.S. Embassy and Consulate in San José will be closed today and will reopen with their normal office hours, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., tomorrow.

By Gillian Gillers
Tico Times Staff | ggillers@ticotimes.net

Even as President Oscar Arias signed the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) yesterday, the pact's fate was uncertain. Libertarian Movement faction head Luis Antonio Barrantes said he doubted the Legislative Assembly could approve the 12 laws that Costa Rica must pass by March 1, 2008 to implement the treaty.

“There's no way to do it,” Barrantes said. “It's a really complicated panorama.”

Clapping legislators and ministers gave Arias a standing ovation as he signed the law, which Costa Ricans approved in a national referendum last month.

A group of 38 pro-CAFTA legislators are working to pass laws that would put Costa Rica in compliance with the treaty. But progress is slow. The other 19 legislators are trying to block these laws, as a small group of increasingly rowdy CAFTA opponents hold protests outside legislators' houses, the Legislative Assembly and Casa Presidencial.

“Thirty-eight valiant legislators … are braving every type of pressure, lampoons and insults to push this implementation agenda,” President Arias said after signing the treaty. “I sincerely thank them.”

But for all their efforts, only one of the 12 laws has been approved in an initial debate. The twelfth law, concerning intellectual property, has not even been discussed because the Foreign Trade Ministry announced just this week that it was required.

If the assembly cannot pass the 12 laws before March 1, Costa Rica must seek an extension from all the CAFTA-signing countries. Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz said yesterday that the ministry has not considered that possibility.

“We haven't yet thought about asking permission” to extend the deadline, he said. “We trust that the assembly can... finish this process.”

By Peter Krupa
Tico Times Staff | pkrupa@ticotimes.net

Exports this year are set to break the $9 billion mark – a record. During the first 10 months of 2007, Costa Rica exported 14.3% more than during the same period in 2006.

That growth rate, however, is not high enough to reach President Oscar Arias' goal of exporting $16 billion in goods by 2010, Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz told reporters at a press conference Tuesday.

“It's not enough for the goals we have,” Ruiz said. “A greater effort has to be made.”

The government has therefore been meeting with private sector representatives to sort out ways that export growth can be boosted along.

Ruiz said the private sector continues to repeat complaints about the country's infrastructure, its insufficient workforce and the excess of red tape in the Costa Rican market – all things that Ruiz said the Costa Rican bureaucracy is trying to improve.

Meanwhile, Martín Zúñiga, general manager of the public-private Foreign Trade Promotion Office (PROCOMER) said the increase in trade came from a variety of different sectors, making it “growth that is structurally healthy.”

Milk exports continue to soar on high international dairy prices – they are up 60.8% so far, to $15.67 million. Processed food exports are also making an important jump, with $836.6 million exported so far (including juices, sauces, fruit pulp and alcohol), a 35% increase.

Trade with China continues to boom, with $1.17 billion exported to the Asian giant so far this year, compared with $1.01 billion for all of 2006.

Other export products showing an interesting increase include computer parts not produced in the sprawling Intel complex.

Exports of computer parts have gone from $58 million last year to $207.4 million so far this year, thanks mostly to a single company that Zúñiga declined to name.

Beginning Nov. 29, Costa Rica will require that tourists from 18 countries in South America and Africa have an international certificate proving they have been vaccinated for yellow fever.

Immigration Administration officials told the press yesterday this measure was declared in August, but it will not go into effect until next month.

Countries affected are Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, French Guyana, Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Gabon, the Congo, Angola, Cameroon, the Sudan and Burkina Faso. These are countries where the virus is most commonly found.

Immigration Director Mario Zamora said that of these countries, Brazil is the only one that now requires a yellow fever vaccine.

Costa Rica decided to enforce this requirement because of a dengue epidemic the country has grappled with this rainy season. Yellow fever, like dengue, is transmitted by mosquito bites. Health authorities fear the dengue-transmitting aedes aegypti mosquito found in Costa Rica could also become a carrier of yellow fever.