Photo by Element5 Digital

8th April 2022

Last Sunday, 3 April, Costa Ricans took to the polls to elect their new President. The candidates, who came out on top in the first round of voting in February, were José María Figueres, the former President of Costa Rica (1994-1998) and Director of the World Economic Forum (2000-2004) of the centre-left PLN party, and Rodrigo Chaves, the former Minister of Finance (2019-2020) of the centrist PPSD party who resigned following frequent clashes with President Carlos Alvarado Quesada, the incumbent of the centre-left PAC party. Chaves emerged victorious, defeating Figueres by less than 6%, garnering 52.9% of the vote to Figueres’ 47.1%. Upon the results being announced, Chaves reiterated his pledge to “rework” the country’s nearly $2bn agreement with the IMF, declaring that the current deal was “not ambitious enough.” However, Chaves’ ability to achieve this and other campaign promises will be limited by the fact that his party only won 10 of the 57 seats in the Costa Rican Congress. 

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Photo by Nicholas Doherty

25th March 2022

According to a study released this week by the International Renewable Energy Agency, Central American countries could cut systemic costs by $20bn between 2018 and 2050 “by pursuing a more ambitious energy transition.” The study estimates Central America’s collective “renewable energy potential” to be 180GW, which is ten times more than its current “installed capacity.” Harnessing that full potential would entail shifting grids to 90% renewables and vehicles to 75% electric by 2050, which equates to expanding the use of renewables “three-fold” or 1.4GW per annum. The results of such a shift, in addition to the cost savings, would be a 70% reduction in regional emissions by 2050. Further measures recommended by the study include phasing in the use of green hydrogen for lorries and ships that comprise regional supply chains. If you are interested in entering the renewable energy market in Central America, contact our consulting arm, Colibri. 

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 Photo by Meritt Thomas

11th March 2022

On 3 March, the leaders of CARICOM and SICA convened in Belize for the first summit between the two regional blocs in eleven years. “Clearly much has happened in the world since 2011. The global and regional landscape has changed significantly. Our partnership, therefore, must be strategic,” John Briceno, the Prime Minister of Belize and Chair of CARICOM, told delegates in his opening remarks. As both a Caribbean and Central American nation, Belize is a member of both CARICOM and SICA. “Our dual membership has allowed us a unique vantage point from which we see two groups of developing countries coexisting in the middle of the Americas,” Briceno noted. Following the one-day gathering, SICA and CARICOM issued the Joint Declaration of San Pedro, wherein they pledged to “strength collaboration and cooperation” across a variety of areas, including: public health (particularly in terms of the pandemic), foreign policy, banking and finance, trade and investment, tourism, agriculture, and security.

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Photo by Karollyne Hubert

25th February 2022

Although the situation unfolding now in Ukraine may appear far removed from Central America, rising prices of commodities ranging from fuel to food, volatile foreign exchange rates, and looming travel restrictions affecting tourism are already being felt across the region. Accordingly, the leaders of Central America have been making their voices heard. The governments of Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras, and Guatemala have all denounced Russia’s actions (albeit to varying degrees), urging a return to “diplomacy and dialogue.” “What happens in a war not only affects those directly involved but affects everyone,” President Carlos Alvarado Quesada of Costa Rica said in an early-morning press conference yesterday. “This [conflict in Ukraine] will affect Costa Rica. It will affect fuel prices. This will affect transportation logistics and may affect activities of various kinds. Hence our call for peace,” he continued. Although President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua has yet to issue a statement since the invasion began on Thursday, he said in a televised address on Monday: “If Ukraine gets into NATO, they will be saying to Russia ‘let’s go to war,’ and that explains why Russia is acting like this. Russia is simply defending itself.” On Thursday morning, concurrent to the launch of the invasion, Vyacheslav Volodin, the President of the Russian State Duma, arrived in Nicaragua from Cuba to meet with his counterpart, Gustavo Porras, the President of the Nicaraguan National Assembly, to reaffirm the “friendship” of their two nations. Meanwhile, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador is the only Central American leader that has yet to weigh in, besides expressing his scepticism about the “credibility” of US intelligence assessments and the sincerity of Canada’s “stances about democracy” earlier in the week. 

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Photo by Manuel

11th February 2022

Millicom, a publicly traded multinational telecommunications conglomerate, has announced that it will invest $3bn across Central America over the next three years. It is already the “leading mobile company” in the region, having made $5bn worth of acquisitions over the last three years. As reported in our 19 November issue, in November, Millicom bought out its partner in Guatemala, Miffin Associations, for $2.2bn, which is the country’s “largest ever single foreign investment” to date. According to the Financial Times, the company “has 44mn mobile customers and 4mn home broadband customers, and the $3bn will primarily be spent on upgrading infrastructure and expanding the existing business.” “We’re definitely the largest European and American investor in those markets,” Mauricio Ramos, Millicom’s Chief Executive, told the FT, in relation to Central America. “Our basic premise is these are growing economies, very stable [foreign exchange], significantly underpinned by an increasing amount of remittances.” 

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Photo by eldiario.es

28th January 2022

Yesterday, Xiomara Castro was sworn in as the first female President of Honduras at a “packed” inauguration ceremony at the National Stadium in the capital of Tegucigalpa. Exactly two months prior, Castro — the leader of the left-wing Libre Party and wife of former President Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009) — defeated Nasry Asfura — the Mayor of Tegucigalpa and nominee of the Nacional Party to succeed term-limited incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernández — by a 20% margin. At the ceremony, which was attended by foreign dignitaries — including King Felipe of Spain, US Vice President Kamala Harris, and the British Ambassador who came bearing a congratulatory note from the Queen — Castro pledged to fight crime and state corruption, seek a restructuring of the national debt, and “immediately give free electricity” to over a million of the country’s “poorest” citizens with the “bigger consumers subsidising the cost.” Within hours of his leaving office, Hernández — who has been dogged by allegations of kleptocracy throughout his tenure — took a seat in the Central American Parliament (a regional body that heads of state are automatically inducted into upon finishing their terms), which grants him immunity from prosecution in the region and may also protect him from being extradited to the US on drugs charges. The possibility of that happening was widely speculated after his party lost the election. Hernández’s brother was sentenced to life in prison in a US court last year after being found guilty of narcotics trafficking. 

Photo by Nathan Rogers

14th January 2022

Today, it was announced that Paramount+, the streaming platform of the US mass media conglomerate, Viacom CBS, had won the rights to broadcast Premier League games and all related coverage in several Latin American countries for three years, beginning this season. The deal encompasses Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, as well as Belize and the Dominican Republic on a “non-exclusive basis.” “We know audiences around the world are passionate about sports, and especially about football. This partnership with the Premier League brings exclusive content directly to those fans, live for the first time, on Paramount+ in Mexico and Central America,” Raffaele Annecchino, the Chief Executive of ViacomsCBS International, told the press. The Premier League’s clubs themselves are also set to directly benefit from this deal, seeing as half of the League’s “overseas revenue” is awarded to the teams “based upon merit” (which means the higher a team ranks, the more it earns), while the other half is “spread evenly across” all 20 member clubs.