Country Report Costa Rica August 2009

You may have noticed that since the second quarter of this year, some additional content has started to appear in your monthly and quarterly CRs. We are now including a country map, and a range of basic data (selected to be useful for business travellers in particular), in every country report. For most countries, except a few where data is in very short supply, we are also including comparative economic indicators that show each country's position relative to regional peers, in easy-to-read graphical format.

In addition, for 176 countries, the Country Reports will now include an annual analysis of each country's position in the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, which ranks countries in terms of their level of democracy, based on five key categories. These analyses were published in the second quarter of this year (in the April country reports for countries covered on a monthly basis, and in the second-quarter reports for those covered on a quarterly basis). Furthermore, as a new feature for more than 150 countries, an analysis of each country's ranking in our unique Quality of Life index will be published on an annual basis starting in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Some of this content has been migrated over to the Country Reports from another product, the Country Profile, which has now been discontinued. The difficult decision to close the Country Profile reflected limited client demand for this service as well as our view that much of the content included in this report is now available for free elsewhere. We would appreciate any feedback that you have on the migration of content from the Country Profiles to the Country Reports.