Rocio Aguilar, Minister of Treasury, is analyzing the 330 Government institutions that are currently attached to the different Ministries, to evaluate the possibility of eliminating some of them and with this bring down the expenses.

The proposal is expected to be ready by 2020 and involves the analysis of each institution and the impact they have on terms of budget.
According to Aguilar, many of these institutions have expense plans that are not subject to revision by the Legislative Assembly, and therefore the control of the expenses is limited. Also, the fact that many of these entities also have their own legal regimens creates duplicity and lack of coordination and connection, resulting in inefficiency.

The idea is to come up with a proposal to unify or merge some of these entities to help reduce costs.

Aguilar stated that 30% of the 330 institutions concentrate 80% of the expenses.

“The country has not wanted to make a change and it seems impossible to propose projects, not to close but even to merge institutions”, commented the Minister.

Albert Barreix, expert in fiscal topics for the Inter-American Development Bank who visited the country this week, commented that he first considered that his country (Urugay) had an “abnormally high number of public institutions (150), but then he learned of Costa Rica’s case”.

Closing or merging some of the institutions would not only help reduce costs but would also help to decrease bureaucracy and increase efficiency through the unification of functions.