Costa Rica Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Costa Rica

Costa Rica’s economy grew an estimated 4.2% in 2025 according to the Central Bank of Costa Rica’s October 2025 Monetary Policy Report, a figure the central bank revised upward from an earlier 3.6% (May 2025) and 4.1% (January 2025) projection over the course of the year, reflecting swings tied to global tariff uncertainty and a resilient export sector. The World Bank’s semi-annual Macro Poverty Outlook similarly put 2025 growth at 4.6%, driven by exports — medical devices in particular — and services, while the IMF’s October 2025 World Economic Outlook used a more conservative 3.6% for 2025 and 3.3% for 2026. Nominal GDP stood at approximately $95.35 billion in 2024; GDP per capita estimates for 2025 cluster around $18,000-19,200 depending on source and methodology. The currency is the Costa Rican colón (CRC), which appreciated sharply against the US dollar — from roughly CRC 647/USD in 2022 to about CRC 505/USD average in 2025 and trading near CRC 447-450/USD in August 2026 — an unusually strong performance for a Latin American currency, attributed by analysts to prudent central-bank monetary policy, steady tourism receipts and diversified exports. This currency strength, combined with falling import costs, has pushed Costa Rica into sustained deflation: annual CPI inflation was -1.23% for full-year 2025, the fourth consecutive year outside the central bank’s target band, deepening to roughly -2.5% to -2.7% year-on-year in January-February 2026 before moderating to about -1.6% in April and -1.0% in May 2026. The central bank cut its policy rate from a 2023 peak of 9.0% to 3.25% by end-2025 in response. Structurally, services dominate the economy at 69.2% of GDP, industry contributes 19.9%, and agriculture 3.4%, with manufacturing (especially medical-device and precision manufacturing in free trade zones), tourism, agribusiness and a fast-growing knowledge-services and BPO sector as the principal engines of growth. Roughly 97-98% of Costa Rica’s active businesses are classified as SMEs (MEIC/INEC registry data), with the official MEIC SME Registry growing from 18,301 registered businesses in May 2022 to 36,098 by May 2026.

Costa Rica’s goods exports reached a record roughly $22.85 billion in 2025, with medical devices the standout category: medical-device exports hit $9.199 billion through October 2025, up 30% year-over-year, and made up about 48% of total goods exports across 164 product lines sold to 88 markets. Manufacturing overall accounted for 67% of total exports by end-2025, worth about $13.26 billion, a 10% increase in value. Agricultural exports remain significant but under pressure: banana exports fell from $1.24 billion (2024) to $1.11 billion (2025) due to black sigatoka disease linked to abnormal 2024 rainfall; coffee production for 2025/26 is forecast at 1.17 million 60-kg bags, down from 1.3 million in 2024/25, with a shrinking, aging grower base, even as export prices rose 52% year-over-year to average $465.65/bag through April 2025. The United States remains by far Costa Rica’s dominant trade partner, taking about 49.8% of goods exports and supplying about 39-40% of imports in 2025, followed by the Netherlands, Belgium and Central American markets on the export side, and China, Mexico, Japan and Germany on the import side. FDI totaled $3.533 billion in the first nine months of 2025, up 4.5% year-over-year, with manufacturing absorbing over 80% of that inflow and free trade zones capturing 64.9% of total FDI in the same period. Costa Rica’s investment promotion agency CINDE reports supporting 73 investment projects in 2024 and, in 2025, 19 new FDI projects plus 48 reinvestments, together creating 5,482 net jobs, led by life sciences; free trade zone companies overall employ roughly 200,000-300,000 people directly and indirectly and generate over 60% of national exports. Intel remains a flagship investor, having committed to invest $1.2 billion in its Costa Rica assembly-and-test operations — its only such facility in the Western world — over a two-year window announced in 2023, employing roughly 3,300 workers locally. Regionally, Costa Rica positions itself as a nearshoring and knowledge-services hub for North American firms, distinct from, and notably more institutionally stable than, several Central American neighbors, though its own security situation has deteriorated.

Unemployment fell to a series-low 5.7% in the July-September 2025 quarter, down from 6.6% a year earlier, though it ticked back up to 6.0% in the August-October 2025 rolling quarter; labor force participation was comparatively low at 54%, and informal employment affected about 38.2% of workers, roughly 810,000 people. Poverty fell to 15.2% of households in 2025, the lowest level since the national statistics office began tracking the measure in 1986, down from 18% in 2024 and a COVID-era peak of 23%, with extreme poverty at 3.8%; rural poverty (19.3%) still runs well above urban poverty (13.6%). Politically, 2025-2026 was dominated by an escalating institutional confrontation between President Rodrigo Chaves and Costa Rica’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which barred Chaves from campaigning in the 2026 election after ruling he had illegitimately used his office for a political program, and which asked the Legislative Assembly to strip his immunity over allegations of political belligerence. Despite this, Chaves-aligned candidate Laura Fernández — a 39-year-old political scientist and former Chaves cabinet minister — won the February 1, 2026 presidential election outright in the first round with 48.3% of the vote, the largest first-round margin in 32 years, and her Partido Pueblo Soberano secured an outright legislative majority of 31 of 57 Assembly seats; she was sworn in on May 8, 2026 at Costa Rica’s National Stadium, becoming the country’s second female president after Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014), and immediately signaled a tough crime agenda as her priority. That crime agenda responds to a genuine security deterioration: the national homicide rate hit roughly 17 per 100,000 in 2025, versus 11.2 in 2019, with roughly seven in ten murders now linked to drug trafficking as Costa Rica has shifted from a cocaine transit corridor to a logistics hub for Colombian and Mexican trafficking organizations, with the Caribbean port city of Limón recording the country’s highest homicide rate. On fiscal policy, the IMF’s 2025/2026 Article IV consultations found central government debt at 60.4% of GDP by end-2025, a primary surplus of 0.9% of GDP, and an overall fiscal deficit reduced to 3.4% of GDP, continuing an 8-percentage-point debt reduction achieved between 2021 and 2024 under Costa Rica’s fiscal rule.