Central Bank of Costa Rica publishes national accounts overhaul under the 2025 System of National Accounts and rebases GDP to 2022

The Central Bank of Costa Rica announced a comprehensive revision of Costa Rica’s national accounts, positioning the country as the first to disseminate a full update based on the 2025 System of National Accounts (SNA 2025). The revision rebases macroeconomic statistics from 2017 to 2022 and will be made available from 24 November 2025 via the central bank’s National Accounts webpage. Aligned with SNA 2025 and the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual VII (BPM7), the update incorporates new data sources, refreshed concepts, updated classifications and substantially improved methods, including standardized treatment of multinational enterprise flows and strengthened measurement of foreign direct investment and links to distributive wellbeing measures. Under the new reference year, nominal GDP for 2022 increases from CRC 44,810.0 billion to CRC 45,947.4 billion (+2.5%), with higher relative weights for manufacturing (+2.7 percentage points), business services (+1.5), trade (+1.0) and information services (+0.7); the foreign share of value added rises to 27.6% in 2022 from 21.2% in 2017. On the expenditure side, exports’ share increases to 40.6% in 2022 from 32.8% in 2017, while imports rise to 38.5% from 32.3%, alongside a shift from a trade deficit to a surplus. Publication is scheduled in stages: GDP statistics with 2022 as the reference year on 24 November; distributive accounts, globalisation indicators and cantonal GDP on 25 November; the 1991–2024 GDP series on 26 November; and thematic accounts for health, education and environmental footprint on 28 November. The central bank will also run webinars on 25 and 28 November to cover wellbeing, globalisation, cantonal economy, health, education and environmental topics.