The flailing United States’ economy and the ensuing global financial crisis, has hit Costa Rica’s booming tourism development with a multi billion-dollar body punch.

Most telling, is that in the past two years, President Óscar Arias has personally launched three tourism developments in the Northern Pacific, together promising a combined investment of more than a billion dollars, or equivalent to the total US foreign investment in Costa Rica last year.

In the past six months, all three have been either cancelled, or postponed indefinitely.
At least three more so-called mega-projects have suffered the same fate, leaving the Arias administration scrambling to find alternative investment routes, looking to find a David that can stand up to the staggering Goliath in the North.

No easy task, given just last year, according to Central Bank figures, the US total foreign investment in Costa Rica amounted to $1.1 billion dollars. By comparison, total European investment was less than half that at $499 million dollars. Chinese investment was a veritable drop in the ocean at $2.2 million.

Still, President Arias continues to court his new best friend in Asia (he will host the Chinese leader on a State visit next week), while the European Union has shown an important hike in investment in the country.