Costa Rica’s FDI on course to recovery

Investments between January and March surpass US$4.2 million, more jobs available as multinationals expand operations

Analysts who predicted that Costa Rica would be well-placed as an investment hub as the pandemic slows down can now watch its fulfillment, according to reports by the Costa Rican Coalition of Development Initiatives (CINDE), which hopes the country can return to pre-pandemic investment level of over US$2billion in 2021

The investment promotion agency is aware that projects that had to be frozen or postponed because of the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 are now beginning to reactivate gradually. In the quarter of 2021, about nine multinationals have announced launchings or expansions in the country, with an added Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of over US$4.2 million.

However, that amount may even be much higher, considering that a lot of companies do not make their investment data publicly available. This includes firms like Biomerics, Fujitsu, Bayer, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The latest of these is the San Francisco-based software company Autodesk, which officially announced the opening of a new Latin America office, situated in San José, Costa Rica.

San Francisco-based software company Autodesk… announced the opening of a new Latin America office San José, Costa Rica

The Costa Rican office is where the internal sales operations and other teams will work together to drive the growth and expansion the firm seeks in Latin America. This company currently has 50 employees and is looking to hire nine highly specialized positions. This past week, Viatris, the world’s sixth largest company in the health sector, unveiled plans to inject an initial investment of US$1.4 million in Costa Rica.

More jobs are on the horizon, as Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon, opens in San José, with plans to employ highly qualified experts to fill sales, public sector, marketing, and technical engineering openings.

At the moment, the largest capital injection Costa Rica has had in 2021, is that of Helm360, a global technology and data analysis company. The firm officially launched in the country in 2020 and plans to open a new support center in San Isidro de El General, in Pérez Zeledón, by the end of 2021, with an initial investment of US$2 million.