The Costa Rica News (TCRN) – Costa Rica’s president, Laura Chinchilla, announced that she has frozen the salaries of senior government officials for the fourth year in a row while the public sector receives increases.
Wages will remain unchanged for 2014 for the president, vice presidents, ministers, deputy ministers, heads of public institutions and managers of state enterprises, the presidency said in a statement.
“This has been adopted by the government in order to contribute to reducing the fiscal deficit and the economic situation,” she said in the statement.
Furthermore, the Costa Rican Minister of Labour, Olman Segura, met Thursday with representatives of the public sector unions to begin negotiating the salary increase for the first half of 2014.
Neither party submitted a proposal and agreed to meet again on January 20 in order to have time to discuss issues such as the economic situation and inflation.
In Costa Rica there are separate biannual wage increases for the public sector and the private sector, which usually offset the rate of inflation.
Costa Rica last year closed with the lowest inflation rate in four decades to record at 3.68%.
The Costa Rica News (TCRN)
San Jose Costa Rica
