Construction of Special Economic Zone

During Chinese president Xi Jinping's visit to Costa Rica in June 2013, China pledged to support Costa Rica in the construction of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ/EEZ) as an export platform for Chinese companies, with China Development Bank as the would-be-financier.

A partnership agreement between the two countries was signed on January 6, 2015, with a feasibility study of the zone planned to be completed by the end of October 2015.

However, in November of that year (2015), the head of Costa Rica's Ministry of Foreign Trade (COMEX), Alexander Mora, announced that the feasibility study was yet to begin and that the new projected completion date was the third quarter of 2016.

Due to delays related to "bad management on the part of the current administration" (Central American Data, citing former Costa Rican ambassador to China, Marco Vinicio Ruiz), the study's results only became available in September of 2017.

While the documents are unavailable to the public still, a COMEX press release summarized the results as follows: "The study concludes that, in order to promote a project of this scale of ambition in the country, it is first necessary to work hard to generate a series of basic conditions necessary for the concretion and consolidation of these types of models." Specifically, China established the following preconditions to establishing an SEZ: 1) building a new airport in Orotina, 2) expanding the existing route to Puerto Caldera, 3) building the San José-San Ramón highway, and 4) simplifying business procedures.