Costa Rica’s President Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera, gave his third state of the nation report yesterday, May 3, at the Costa Rican congress.

The President emphasized on the efforts of his government to promote the process of change for Costa Rica, with the purpose of “building democracy and ruling with honesty”.
Solís stated his government has found complex external circumstances and limitations for the actions of the Executive Power, including bureaucratic structures to protect particular unions’ interests and those who abuse the Law and use it as an instrument to create obstacles.

Despite the challenges and difficulties, Solís confirms the change is evident and it is shown through thousands of actions that the Government has executed and that are shown in a Work Mapthis administration has made available for all citizens online, many of the actions are already built or concluded others are in the process of being carried out throughout the whole country.

“From bridges that hadn’t been finished for years, to politics for the rational exploitation of the oceans, the recovery of agriculture and farming as a productive ecosystem, the promotion of the mega terminal in Limon, the change of model to fight poverty which gave us the National Strategy Bridge to Development (Estrategia Nacional Puente al Desarrollo), the first time that a negotiation was done to lower the benefits of the Collective Conventions and the reduction of social conflict through the use of dialogue and the participation of different sectors, among many other processes”, said the President.

According to Solis, the country saw an economic growth in 2016, going from a 3.7% to a 4.1%, despite the fact that the majority of Latin American countries registered contractions in their economy.

The President continued to mention that the responsible administration of public finances allowed for a reduction of the fiscal deficit in 2016, and Costa Rica became the leader in Latin America in different areas such as contention in the raise of prices, reduction of interest rates and exports growth, and emphasized that a sustainable tax reform is still pending; Congress had made progress with new tools that will help fight fraud and trafficking, but the country requires a long term solution to face in a sustainable way the raise of the public debt and to reduce the fiscal deficit.

Other achievements mentioned included: an improvement of the infrastructure of education centers across the country, the historical debt payment to the Social Security Administration and the process to simplify different procedures.

Finally the mentioned two situations that he feels helped in the country’s unity to face them in the best way, first the massive entry of immigrants to the country first from Cuba, then from Haiti and other countries, and also the Otto Hurricane emergency.

President Luis Guillermo Solís denied the accusations of corruption that have been made by other political parties and stated his government has fought corruption efficiently, allowing the country to have the best score it’s ever had in the Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International.