Countries to WatchCosta Rica
Costa Rica has long positioned itself as a stable, outward-looking economy in Central America, combining democratic continuity with a strong environmental and social narrative. Over time, this positioning has translated into growing credibility among investors, entrepreneurs, skilled professionals, and international partners.
This showcase examines how Costa Rica performs across key global benchmarks — from economic development and ease of doing business to talent attraction and sustainability — and how these indicators connect to a broader national strategy.
Essential Costa Rica brings together brand positioning, investment attraction, and sustainability-led innovation to illustrate how the country translates long-term values into economic competitiveness.
The Essential COSTA RICA Country Brand
Costa Rica’s country brand strategy — Essential COSTA RICA — was developed in 2013 by an inter-institutional committee comprising The Costa Rican Trade and Investment Agency (PROCOMER), The Costa Rican Institute of Tourism (ICT), The Ministry of Foreign Trade (COMEX), the Ministry of Culture and Youth of Costa Rica, and the Ministry of External Relations.
Built on the reputation of the country, the Essential COSTA RICA country brand stands for the nation’s commitment to excellence, sustainability, social progress, innovation, and Costa Rican rooting for the benefit of current and future generations.
It showcases the nation’s values focused on peace, education, and health through tourism, trade, and direct foreign investment, supporting international initiatives, particularly those aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change.
Sustainability as National Strategy
Costa Rica is widely considered a world leader in social progress, environmental conservation, and sustainability.
To achieve its clean and green image, the Costa Rican government has spearheaded a range of initiatives to safeguard its natural assets. To date, over 26 percent of the country’s land territory is protected through 161 national parks, refuges, and conservation areas, while 30 percent of Costa Rica’s maritime territory is also under protection.
According to the 2024 Environmental Performance Index, Costa Rica performs strongly across key environmental indicators, including protected areas and emissions-related measures.
Notably, the Essential COSTA RICA country brand is backed by public policies aimed at sustainability. Costa Rica’s commitment to decarbonisation and its goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 earned the country the 2019 Champions of the Earth award from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The country is well on track to reduce CO₂ emissions, with 99 percent of its electricity already derived from renewable sources, supplying clean energy to nearly all citizens.
According to the World Bank, Costa Rica was the first tropical country to reverse deforestation and the first Latin American country to receive a payment from the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) for reducing carbon emissions linked to deforestation and forest degradation.
Country Brand Strength and International Reputation
As part of its tenth anniversary, Essential COSTA RICA established a long-term 2035 strategy, placing climate action and sustainability at the centre of the country’s international narrative. The strategy was informed by advanced data analysis and the use of artificial intelligence to identify global meta-trends expected to remain relevant over time.
This process was complemented by structured consultations with Costa Rican stakeholders across both public and private sectors, including business chambers, academia, healthcare, and tourism. The analytical framework was developed using Bloom Consulting’s Nation Brand Taxonomy Model.
Independent reputation rankings further reflect the country’s positioning. In the 2025 RepCore Nation ranking, which measures how G7 countries perceive other nations, Costa Rica ranked first in reputation among Latin American countries.
In sector-specific assessments, the Bloom Consulting Country Brand Ranking Tourism edition 2024–2025 places Costa Rica fourth in the Americas, while the Trade edition ranks the country tenth in the region.
Costa Rica’s data-led approach to country branding has also received international recognition. In 2024, the City Nation Place Awards London highlighted Costa Rica in the Best Use of Data category, recognising how evidence-based insights have been used to shape and guide its country brand strategy.
Doing Business in Costa Rica
Costa Rica has taken sustained steps to position itself as an attractive destination for business, investment, and entrepreneurship. These efforts have supported rising exports and greater diversification across sectors, including life sciences, advanced manufacturing, business services, and digital technologies, alongside tourism and wellbeing.
As Adriana Acosta, Country Brand Director at PROCOMER, notes: “Ten years ago, when we launched Essential Costa Rica as a brand, the idea was to offer added value to different sectors — not just tourism but also exports, foreign investment, and culture — and tell the world that we are more than just one aspect.”
To strengthen supply chains and facilitate trade, Costa Rica has established 18 free trade agreements with partners including Canada, China, the European Union, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States. These agreements provide preferential access to approximately 2.8 billion people and more than 60 percent of global GDP, supporting competitiveness across more than 150 export destinations.
The country offers a stable and predictable business environment for companies looking to establish or expand operations, underpinned by low levels of corruption, a well-educated workforce, and long-standing political stability.
In 2024 alone, Costa Rica welcomed 61 new multinational projects across manufacturing, technology, and services, contributing to a record 32 percent increase in foreign direct investment inflows, according to Costa Rica’s Central Bank. The country currently ranks third globally for greenfield investment attraction, according to fDi Intelligence, and hosts more than 1,000 global companies with regional operations.
What executives think about Costa Rica as a business location
For climate-conscious investors, Costa Rica has emerged as a strategic location for technology-driven and high-value manufacturing sectors, including medical devices. Johnson & Johnson MedTech, for example, operates its largest manufacturing facility outside the United States in Grecia, Alajuela — a 19,000 m² plant creating 3,000 jobs and supplying medical devices worldwide.
“Costa Rica is a highly strategic location where we've been present for 40 years,” says Gustavo Galá, International Vice President for Johnson & Johnson MedTech Latin America. “We’ve benefited enormously from the local talent, which brings specialised expertise in our industry.”
Similarly, Medtronic, one of the world’s largest medical device manufacturers, has expanded its operations in Costa Rica as part of its path toward net-zero operations by 2030. “Operating our manufacturing plant in Costa Rica has been very satisfactory in terms of productivity, efficiency, and costs,” says Alberto Meseguer, Site Director of Operations at Medtronic Costa Rica, citing talent availability, the free zone regime, and strong infrastructure.
Essential Costa Rica
As a stamp of authenticity and to ensure products and services meet rigorous national standards, Essential COSTA RICA developed a business evaluation protocol that covers the five values of the country brand: Excellence, Sustainability, Social Progress, Innovation, and Costa Rican Rooting.
The protocol sets a roadmap for commercial businesses and the tourism sector to assume a real and demonstrable commitment to country brand values, among them, of course, sustainability.
Over 700 companies have committed to pursue the Essential COSTA RICA license. These business establishments understand that beyond using the logo, carrying the country brand adds value to their businesses outside of the nation’s borders. A large variety of committed Costa Rican companies use the country brand in their communications, most of them small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Talent and Skills: Why Costa Rica Competes
Costa Rica has emerged as an attractive destination for highly skilled professionals seeking both career opportunity and quality of life. The country offers a growing range of roles across manufacturing and services, supported by continued investment projects and employment opportunities within multinational companies.
Long-term public policy has played a central role in shaping Costa Rica’s talent base. Education spending accounts for 7.4 percent of GDP, reflecting a national commitment reinforced in 1948, when the country abolished its army and redirected resources toward education and social development.
According to the Education at a Glance 2022 report by the OECD, Costa Rica allocates 12.8 percent of total government expenditure to education, above the OECD average of 10.6 percent. Relative to GDP, public spending on primary to tertiary education (5.9 percent) also exceeds the OECD average (4.4 percent), supporting the development of skills aligned with market needs.
This foundation has made Costa Rica an attractive base for companies operating in technology-driven and high-value manufacturing sectors. As Natalia Méndez Debriones, Leader of Medical Device Operations at Philips, notes: “The growth of Philips in Costa Rica is due to strong results from local operations, driven by the quality, commitment, and passion of Costa Rican talent. This is how we grew from 550 employees in 2015 to 2,850 today.”
Randy Schiestl, Vice President of R&D at Boston Scientific, reinforces this perspective: “Costa Rica has proven to be a compelling, performance-driven location for our operations. Key drivers include highly committed, multi-disciplined local talent, cross-divisional collaboration, and growth into R&D, process development, and laboratory competencies.”
In international benchmarks, Costa Rica continues to perform strongly. According to the Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2025 by INSEAD, the country is among the five talent champions within upper-middle-income economies for the second consecutive year. It also performs strongly in workforce capabilities and skills development, as reflected in World Economic Forum assessments and the World Bank’s Human Capital Index.
Each year, more than 8,500 students graduate with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) degrees, reinforcing Costa Rica’s position as a reliable source of specialised talent for globally integrated industries.
Tourism: Demand, Nature, and Reputation
Costa Rica received 2.6 million visitors in 2025.
For outdoor enthusiasts and nature lovers, Costa Rica remains a leading ecotourism destination. According to the 2025 Reader Travel Awards, Wanderlust ranked Costa Rica as the second most desirable country in the world to visit, highlighting its biodiversity, outdoor experiences, and strong commitment to sustainable tourism.
Costa Rica’s natural beauty continues to be its greatest asset. The BBC has recently highlighted Costa Rica among the world’s top travel destinations, citing its biodiversity, conservation leadership, reforestation efforts, and long-standing transition toward renewable energy and responsible tourism.
Tourism in Costa Rica is closely tied to the country’s natural heritage, culture, gastronomy, and pura vida, contributing to strong performance compared with regional peers in environmental sustainability and natural resources.
Behind the Scenes: Adriana Acosta on Costa Rica's Investment Attraction Priorities
Since 2022, Costa Rica’s Director of Country Brand, Adriana Acosta, has played a central role in shaping how the country positions itself to international investors. In this interview, she reflects on Costa Rica’s investment attraction priorities, the strategic choices behind the country brand, and the challenges and results emerging from this work.
The new interview will be published shortly. In the meantime, you can listen to an earlier conversation with her here.
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