As the last country highlighted by Emerginvest in 2008, Costa Rica holds a place as one of the best markets to have invested in – both in terms of relative performance for the last year, as well as strong growth in the last month.

Nestled between Nicaragua and Panama, south of Mexico, Costa Rica lays claim to only 4.3 million people, and a national GDP of approximately $21 billion. The economy is mainly driven by three industries: a widespread agricultural sector which accounts for 8.7% of the GDP, a strong industrial sector (producing items such as electronic components, food processing, textiles, etc), which accounts for 28.9% of GDP, and an extremely deep tourism and services sector which accounts for 62.4% of GDP. Their stock exchange, the Bolsa Nacional de Valores, has been in operation for the last 29 years.

After one of the worst years in history for stock markets across the world, a “good” market is considered one to have lost “only” 30%, and most developed countries have shed anywhere between 35-50%+ of their entire value. A few comparables are: UK -32%, Germany -40%, France -43%, Italy -49%, Belgium -54%, Spain -40%, Russia -67%, Japan -42%, China -65%, India -51%.

With that being said, Emerginvest reports that Costa Rica has amazingly only lost 7.85% in the last year, a figure which ranks it the 8^th best performing market in the world, out of the 80+ that Emerginvest tracks. Of those eight top countries, all are frontier markets – including Ghana, Malawi, and Tunisia in the top three spots.

However, not only has Costa Rica faired extremely well comparatively in the last year, but it has demonstrated strong growth potential in the last quarter, jumping 8.18% in the last month. That ranks Costa Rica as the 7^th highest growth country in the world for the last month, including an astonishing last week where the market jumped 4.45%.

With a consistent historical record, at a time when most countries have stumbled badly, in combination to their strong growth over the last month, Emerginvest is proud to highlight the Bolsa Nacional de Valores in the last week of 2008.

Last 5 posts by Jonathan O'Shaughnessy

• Is It Finally The End Of The Bear Market? - March 17th, 2009
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