NEWS
Costa Rica’s Exports of Medical Devices Hit Record Figure
- MedTech exports reached US$5,21 billion in 2021, surpassing the $5 billion mark two years earlier than projected.
San Jose, Costa Rica. March 1, 2022. Costa Rica has started 2022 off on the right foot with its exports of goods and services. Medical Devices, which has marked a turning point for the Costa Rican economy and is now the country´s #1 export product, outperformed again in the first month of 2022.
The MedTech sector grew 20% in January 2022 as compared to January 2021, or an equivalent to US $63 million, currently accounting for 34% of all goods exports.
This upward trend has been in evidence for several years including the pandemic. Last year the exports topped US $5,213 million, reaching this figure earlier than planned in a show of extraordinary performance and the country´s resilience for top-value, complex and highly regulated industries.
Figures provided by the Foreign Trade Promotion Agency (PROCOMER) show that by end of 2021, Costa Rica has been able to leverage its solid foreign trade platform, sending more than 90% of its exports to countries with which it has free trade agreements and taking advantage of trends such as nearshoring, which has added more companies to the Costa Rican export sector.
The main markets continue to be mainly North America, Europe, and Asia. However, Costa Rica also showed growth in electrical and electronic exports, reporting a 36% increase from January 2021 to January 2022 to a total of US $62 million.
Services. Service exports are also on the rise, growing 6% (at the third quarter of 2021) to US $6,451 million - US $369 million more than in 2020, on that same period. This growth is stronger, growing 9%, if we exclude travel services.
The bulk of this sector’s recovery is in knowledge-intensive services such as business services, information and communication technologies, and transformation services.
