“Despite the inevitable drop in exports, in the case of Costa Rica this was not as pronounced as in other countries in the region”. This is how the Inter-American Development Bank announces it in its 2020 Trade and Integration Monitor: Shock COVID-19, published this month.
With an analysis cut for the first semester, among the Spanish-speaking countries of America, the interannual fall of Costa Rica is the smallest, only that of Guatemala being slightly lower.
For Costa Rica the variation was -2.2%, while that of Guatemalans -1.4. In Mexico, for example, the drop was close to 20%. If we move to the south of the continent, Venezuela had a year-on-year variation of -69%, Peru -27%, Bolivia -25%, etc.
In the case of Costa Rica, after the first semester, the numbers even improve, although not from one year to the next, but from one month to the next, with growth in October, and some export products even increasing in double digits.
Here is a comparison table for Central America:
Year-on-year drops in percentage 2020:
- Guatemala: 1.4
- Costa Rica: 2.2
- Panama: 2.8
- Honduras: 4.5
- Nicaragua: 5
- El Salvador: 27.6
