The Central Bank of Costa Rica has published updated annual maximum interest rates for credit operations and microcredit in colones, U.S. dollars and other currencies. The update is part of the bank’s twice-yearly process under Article 36 bis of Law No. 7472, as amended by Law No. 9859, and sets the caps to be used for the following six-month period. For standard credit other than microcredit, the cap is calculated by taking the simple average of the last 12 months of weighted average active annual lending rates, adding 12.8 percentage points and multiplying the result by 1.5. For microcredit, the same 12-month base is used, but 13.18 percentage points are added and the result is multiplied by 2.085. The benchmark rate is the negotiated active annual lending rate for the Other Depository Corporations group calculated by the Central Bank of Costa Rica, using the rate in colones or U.S. dollars depending on the currency agreed in the contract, while contracts in other currencies use the U.S. dollar rate. The calculation for this update used monthly negotiated active lending rates from July 2025 through June 2026. These maximum annual rates apply to contracts, businesses or transactions entered into in the semester following their publication.
Central Bank of Costa Rica2026-07-03
Central Bank of Costa Rica publishes new annual maximum interest rates for credit and microcredit
The Central Bank of Costa Rica has issued updated annual maximum interest rates for credit and microcredit in colones, U.S. dollars and other currencies. The caps were calculated using the 12-month average of negotiated active lending rates from July 2025 to June 2026 under the formulas set out in Article 36 bis of Law No. 7472. They apply to contracts and transactions entered into during the following semester.