Last week the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Policy (MIDEPLAN) and the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica held the forum Thinking About National Development from a Regional Perspective with the support of the EUROsociAL programme, which is financed by the EU. The objective of the forum was to think on the need to establish national strategies for achieving economic and social equity in the country. EUROsociAL is supporting the Costa Rican government in designing a National Policy for Regional Development as an instrument for reducing territorial disparities in the interior of the country; to do this, in coming days it will form a mixed commission within the Legislative Assembly, in which the Ministry of Planning will also participate, to prepare the draft law.

The forum included the participation of European experts who spoke about regional development policy in the EU, with examples of both European regional policies and those of Member States, specifically Spain. The three experts—Ronald Hall, principal advisor at DG Regional and Urban Policy at the European Commission; José Ignacio Sánchez Amor, Deputy National of the Congress of Spain; and Valentín Cortés Cabanillas, Major of Llerena, -outgoing President of the Council of Badajoz— pointed to the importance of implementing a regional policy to strengthen economic and social cohesion in Costa Rica.

In the conversations held in this forum, the Minister of Planning stated that “the regional focus does not just mean compensating the less developed regions for their disadvantages but also improving the growth and competitiveness of each one of them, establishing national policies that contribute to reducing disparities to achieve comprehensive growth of the country based on the principles of equity, with a focus on increasing welfare levels and the improving living conditions of the people who live in each territory”. The President of the Legislative Assembly Rafael Ortiz Fábrega, for his part, stressed that this forum is important because it makes it possible to examine the European experience to "promote effective responses to a problem that we have today, which is the clear existence of two disparate realities: our urban metropolitan zones with high economic and social development indicators, and, on the other hand, the cantons in peripheral regions with serious deficiencies in all categories”.

As part of this forum, the experts attended a meeting hosted by Luis Guillermo Solís, President of the Republic of Costa Rica and First Lady Mercedes Peña Domingo, and the Minister of Planning, Olga Marta Sánchez Oviedo.