OECD Welcomes Costa Rica As Its 38th Member

Today Costa Rica has formally become an OECD Member, the 38th country to do so in the Organisation’s 60-year history.

Costa Rica has now completed its domestic procedures for ratification of the OECD Convention and deposited its instrument of accession. This brings to a successful conclusion an accession process that began in April 2015.

OECD Member countries formally invited Costa Rica to join the Organisation in May 2020, following a five-year accession process during which it underwent in-depth technical reviews by 22 OECD Committees and introduced major reforms to align its legislation, policies and practices to OECD standards. These spanned a wide range of policy areas and included a comprehensive reform of competition policy and enforcement, a redesign of the national statistics system, the introduction of criminal liability of legal persons for foreign bribery and the establishment of a register of shareholders to ensure tax transparency.

Welcoming the news, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said: “We are delighted to welcome Costa Rica into the OECD family at a time when multilateralism is more important than ever. We have been impressed that the cross-party commitment to OECD accession that we witnessed during the accession process continued into the ratification phase, despite the pandemic. This reflects the importance of working together for designing and implementing better policies, and Costa Rica will no doubt represent a new beacon for the OECD in the region,” Mr Gurria said.

Costa Rica’s accession will extend the OECD’s membership to 38 countries. It will be the fourth Member country from the Latin America and Caribbean region to join following Mexico, Chile and Colombia.

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