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OECD 1999
Real Progress: Fifty Years of USAID in Costa Rica
Second, Costa Rican entry into the CACM probably enhanced efficiency of industrial
companies initially, because it introduced Costa Rican firms to greater regional
competition. But as time passed, new investments were made in high-cost production
aimed at the regional market. A high external tariff created tremendously effective
protection from import competition and made adaptation to newer and higher
quality products produced abroad unnecessary. This protection caused product
design and quality to stagnate, making eventual export of manufactured goods outside
the region unlikely. Industrialists resisted lowering import tariffs, which would
have spurred competition, led to greater specialisation, and made the region better
able to export manufactures to the rest of the world. Costa Rican participation in the
common market was initially judged by economists to have been favourable for economic
growth. 7 More recent work suggests that the beneficial effects on investment
and employment were only temporary and led to a dead end. In the longer run, the
CACM probably slowed economic growth by reducing the region’s links to international
competition and technological evolution (Sachs and Warner, 1995).
The outside event that coloured perceptions of Costa Rican development happened
in East Asia. To some extent, success is necessarily relative, linked to expectations
of what is possible. In the 1960s, Costa Rican GDP annual growth rates of
around 6% were viewed as highly satisfactory, for there was little evidence that
countries could grow any faster on a sustained basis. (In the United States, clearly
a development success, per capita GDP has grown relatively consistently at an
annual rate of 1.7% for two centuries.) Costa Rica consistently exceeded this rate in
the 1950s and 1960s. But the goalposts shifted in Asia after World War II. The postwar
experience of Japan and rapid growth in the 1960s in other Asian countries –
notably Korea, Taiwan, and the city – states of Hong Kong and Singapore – have set
a new standard. 6% is no longer rapid growth if 8% or 10% is consistently possible.
Basic human needs and poverty reduction (1972-81)
By 1970, USAID had begun to view Costa Rica as a development success. Its
economy had grown rapidly for some years, fuelled by rapid growth of industrial
exports to Central America and agricultural exports to the United States and
Europe. Exports of coffee, bananas, sugar and beef were growing rapidly. A large
alumina deposit was expected to become a new major export. USAID/Costa Rica
began planning for gradual phase-out and started reducing staff. USAID Mission
submissions to Washington began to emphasise the Mission’s “unfinished agenda”
and activities looking towards a post-aid relationship with Costa Rica.
For a decade after 1972, the Agency shifted its primary work in Costa Rica away
from broad macro-economic and sectoral concerns towards the social and economic
problems of the poorest sectors of society. Initially, this was a response by the Costa
Rican Mission to perceptions in Washington that Costa Rica was on a satisfactory
growth path and that its relatively high income and favourable social indicators
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