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Recent Foreign Investment in Costa Rica

Written by Costa Rica Las Villas on . Posted in Costa Rica, Costa Rica Business, Costa Rica economy, Las Villas de San Buenas, Technology.

Foreign Investment in Costa Rica

Costa Rica has long been a common location for large multi-national corporations to find highly-educated, reliable employees. Recently, Cargill and IBM each opened up new facilities in the San Jose metro area increasing the foreign investment in Costa Rica in 2014.

Cargill to open Business Services Center in Costa Rica

Cargill, based in Minnesota, USA, is opening business services center that will provide technical support to the
Cargill foreign investment in costa ricagroup’s 50 companies in the Americas in areas such as finance, information technologies, human resources, transportation and logistics. Costa Rica was chosen by Cargill over other locations in Argentina, Columbia, Panama and Mexico.

Cargill will hire staff with expertise in accounting, business administration, information technology and finance. Potential employees must be fluent in Spanish, English and Portuguese.

Cargill also spoke with representatives from other Fortune 500 companies that have operations in the co
untry, such as WalMart, Procter & Gamble and Citibank.

“Cargill conducted research and chose Costa Rica because it is the most effective and engaging location for us,” Cargill Central America President Bruce Burdett told El Financiero in an interview. “The final decision was based on the country’s political and economic situation, and the availability of a highly trained workforce with good levels of foreign languages.”

Cargill in 2011 acquired Costa Rica’s popular meat and poultry producer Pipasa Corporation and also represents animal food brands including Purina, Ascan, Mimados and Don Gato. This continued foreign investment in Costa Rica will increase their presence here in the country. 

Founded in 1865, Cargill has 143,000 employees in 67 countries. It is a producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and services. 

Sources: http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/05/06/cargill-chooses-costa-rica-for-new-services-center

IBM Opens IT Security Operations Center in Costa Rica

IBM Logo Costa Rica

IBM celebrated its 10 year anniversary in Costa Rica with the opening of its latest Security Operations Center (SOC). Through an initial investment that includes infrastructure and education, the center will allow IBM to address the growing security needs of its clients in the region.

“We would like to thank IBM for its confidence to reinvest in an operation that will create more quality jobs for its citizens,” said Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis. “The announcement of a new IBM Security Operations Center reinforces the international image that Costa Rica is a strategic target for high-tech investments and is evidence of the commitment made since the first day of this government to dedicate ourselves to proactively executing a directive in favor of new, quality jobs—the main objective of our visit to the United States.  This is a tribute to the quality of human talent in the region.”

With this new center, the first in Costa Rica, IBM adds to the existing services offered in the country including cloud , business analytics , project management, human resources, financial services and more. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the security center of operations team will monitor the latest security events experienced by IBM clients, assess their potential impact on the business and ensure that IBM clients’ infrastructure is configured to handle the latest threats. As a result of this analysis, IBM will help to protect people, data, applications, transactions and the infrastructure for all businesses in the region.
“Companies like IBM clearly demonstrate the evolution that the services industry is undergoing in Costa Rica as companies here move forward to manage more complex and sophisticated processes,” said the Minister of Foreign Trade, Alexander Mora. “This progress is made possible by the talent and skills of our country’s workforce. We are succeeding in creating new world linkages and providing more value that will help us bring more Costa Rican companies into the dynamics of world trade.”

Sources: http://costaricarealestateblogs.blogspot.com/2014/07/ibm-opens-it-security-operations-center.html

New Costa Rica Call Center to Add up to 500 jobs

Written by Costa Rica Las Villas on . Posted in Costa Rica Business.

Source:http://www.ticotimes.net/daily_paid/dailynewsarchive/2010_08/081910.htm#story2
By Sophia Klempner
Tico Times Staff | [email protected]
The Sunnyvale, California-based Motif is one of a growing cadre of foreign companies setting up shop in Costa Rica. Now with 185 employees, up from an initial 100 in late January, the company projects growing to 500 employees by 2012, said Andrea Centeno, communications director at the Costa Rican Investment Board (CINDE).

This week marked the inauguration of Motif’s renovated 2,200-square-meter building in the America Free Zone in Heredia, north of San José. It joins Hewlett-Packard, StarTek and others at the facility near the Real Cariari shopping mall. Described on its website as “a business process outsourcing company serving Fortune 500 clients,” Motif’s Costa Rica office will provide telephone and e-mail services in both English and Spanish to clients of a prominent U.S. travel agency.

Costa Rica has benefited from its position as what Centeno calls an “efficient, or cost-effective, destination for foreign direct investment primarily in the areas of services (call center-type operations), advanced manufacturing (including microprocessors, automotive parts and aeronautics, among others), and medical device manufacturing.” While these three areas are all “very dynamic sectors of the economy,” Centeno described the service sector’s 2,800 percent increase in jobs over the past nine years as “wild.”

Costa Rica excels at providing attractively priced, highly trained workers, a growing number of whom have enough mastery of English to provide customer services to U.S.-based businesses via phone and e-mail. While countries like Chile attract natural resource-oriented investment due to their mineral riches, and others attract foreign investment for access to their markets, Costa Rica’s competitive edge lies in its human capital, said Centeno.

Snapshot of the Most Dynamic Foreign Direct Investment Sectors 2000 and 2009

SECTOR Com-panies 2000 Jobs 2000 Com-panies 2009 Jobs 2009 % increase in companies % increase in jobs
Services 5 1,065 95 28,416 1,800% 2,568%
Medical device manufacturing 8 1,500 31 9,376 288% 525%
Advanced manufacturing* 30 4,500 55 13,000 83% 188%
TOTAL 43 7,065 181 50,792 321% 619%
*Advanced manufacturing includes computer microprocessors, automotive parts, aeronautics and metal manufacturing.

Source: Costa Rican Investment Board (CINDE)