The work of the Costa Rican agency was compared with 213 other agencies, and positions Costa Rica as the country with the best performance in the management of investment attraction in Latin America and the Caribbean under the national agencies category.

San José, Costa Rica, May 13th, 2009: The Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency (CINDE), organization that attracts foreign direct investment to Costa Rica, was ranked the best national investment promotion agency in Latin America and one of the top ten worldwide agencies with the best performance, according to the “Investment Promotion Benchmarking” conducted by the Investment Climate Advisory Service (FIAS) of the World Bank Group.

With a score of 74% and showing an improvement of 34 percentage points in comparison with the first edition of the study made in 2006, CINDE is very close to the Austrian investment promotion agency, named the best of the world with a score of 89%.

The top 10 national best-practice agencies in the promotion of foreign direct investment to their countries is comprised by Austria, Costa Rica, Sweden, Germany, Canada, Latvia, France, Spain, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

According to Carlos Griffin, Representative of FIAS, the good performance of the Costa Rican agency is a very important element to Costa Rica in terms of global competitiveness in the attraction of foreign investment, especially within the complicated world economic situation.

Evaluation methodology

The evaluation of each agency made by FIAS was based on two exercises with a 50% value each. The first evaluated element was the reply to two projects simulated by the evaluators (a software design center, and a beverages producing company looking to expand its operations); and as a second element, the study evaluated the agencies’ web sites in terms of architecture, usability, quality of the information, relevance of the information provided to the investor and marketing or promotion effectiveness.

“In these tough economic times, with prospects for new investment seeming scarcer, getting the basics of investment promotion right could not be more important. And CINDE’s large improvement in the study could not be more timely. It has risen from a score near the global average in 2006 to join the group of top 10 national IPIs in 2009, which includes long-time best-practice agencies like Invest in Sweden Agency and UK Trade and Investment, as well as this year’s top-ranked IPI, Austrian Business Agency, indicated Griffin.

Quality information, appropriate managing and providing the right service

The study conducted by FIAS between March and September 2008, examined the quality of the information and service that 213 promotion agencies- 182 national and 32 sub national- provide to the investor when handling specific projects as well as through their web sites.

According to Gabriela Llobet, CINDE’s Director General, the results obtained are very satisfactory and also represent a challenge to permanently improve the work done by CINDE.

“We are very proud that Costa Rica appears in this study as one of the countries with the best performances, and furthermore to obtain a position within developed worldwide leading countries that assign a larger amount of resources to the promotion of foreign direct investment. We consider that CINDE’s focus on the sectors in which Costa Rica shows competitiveness as well as our timely reply have been key. These results represent a challenge to us in order to continue to improve every day”, indicated.

Some of the characteristics of the service provided by CINDE that are emphasized in this report are: the quality of their answers to investors, the relevance of the provided information according to the business needs, the knowledge of their sectors, the efficiency and time of reply avoiding bureaucratic processes.

Since its establishment 25 years ago CINDE has collaborated in the attraction of more tan 200 multinational companies to Costa Rica and the generation of approximately 50 thousand jobs.

More about the report

The Global Investment Promotion Benchmarking 2009 report is the second in a series that covers the effectiveness of government agencies in facilitating foreign investment projects. It uses a methodology originally piloted by the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. This initiative is led by the Investment Climate Advisory Service, which is jointly funded by IFC, MIGA, and the World Bank. For more information about the report, visit www.fias.net

About FIAS

FIAS assists governments of developing countries and transition economies in reforming their business environments, with emphasis on regulatory simplification and investment generation. FIAS relies on close collaboration with its donors and World Bank Group partners to leverage value and deliver tangible results.

FIAS is managed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and supported by the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and the World Bank (IBRD).