Representatives buried the project to sell the Bank of Costa Rica

Since he assumed the presidency of Costa Rica on May 8, 2022, Rodrigo Chaves has presented his government’s intention to sell some of the country’s assets, including BCR, and the legal proposal was handed over by the executive branch to the legislature in September last year.

Faced with the opposition of the deputies of the aforementioned committee, the executive branch decided to cancel this initiative in the last period of special sessions (last November to January), when the government decides which bills the legislators must discuss.

With that unanimous vote, members of the Economic Affairs Committee buried what for many of them was a very poor proposal. The group’s chair, Vanessa Castro, an MP from the Christian Social Unity Party, noted that her faction opposed it because the text had a number of inconsistencies.

He explained that it did not show the technical, financial or legal elements necessary to carry out a sale of this size.

The head of the Broad Front faction, Jonathan Acuña, asserted that “it would be a grave mistake to sell a public bank that generates resources that feed into – for example – the pension system or education loans”.

And so, he emphasized, we are pleased to archive this executive branch project that BCR Bank intended to sell, with great problems in its formulation, but with a central problem starting from very bad reasoning as to how to solve public finances. problem.

“Pretending to get money in the very short term, we were letting – with a project like this – receive valuable resources for Costa Rican society, leaving those profits that are distributed today, for example, to the pension system, ultimately in the hands of the private.”

He announced that his party would continue to fight any attempt to waste or sell valuable public companies, such as those now owned by the executive branch.

The Minister of Finance, Nogui Acosta, had already stated that it was possible that next March the government would introduce a new bill for the sale of BCR.

jha/ale