Cellular Lines Almost Out Of Stock
The Instituto Costarricende de Electricidad (ICE), the sole provider of telecommunications in the country, including cellular service, announced that it is almost out of cellular lines it can assign to new subscribers.

Of the more than 900.000 cellular lines - both TDMA and GSM - ICE makes available, only 4.000 of the TDMA lines are available and could be gone by the end of the month, in the next few days.

ICE is being placed in a corner by several key decisions made by the Contraloría General de la Republica (the Comptroller General) that refused to approve a contract with the Ericcson corporation for 600.000 GSM lines.

Ericsson appealed the Contarloria decision to the Constitutional Court (Sala IV) which ruled that the Contraloría should review the contract. The Contraloría is stalling, saying it needs to fully study the court decision before it can obey the order.

In the meantime, the 400.000 GSM lines that were installed a couple of years ago by the French telecommunications firm, Alcatel, which has been the centre of a corruption scandal that has seen a former president and several ICE board members in jail or under house arrest ,are gone.

The 500.000 or so TDMA lines, which had been exausted for a long time before the Alcatel contract, had thousands of lines avialable as customers switched to the newer service.

ICE says that if the approvals don't come anytime soon, Costa Rica will go back to the days when it took months, up to a year of waiting, for new customers to get connected to the cellular network.

In the "old" days, a new customer would be given a number with the order and then anxiously waited the publication in the local newspapers for their number to come up. And if they missed their turn, only to get at the back the line.

The introduction of the Alcatel contract made it possible to go to an ICE office or ICE authorized dealer, make the request, pay the deposit and walk out with a connection. That is the way it's done in most places around the world.

Now, well, it remains to be seen if the future of cellular service takes a step back in time.

First Gasoline Hike of the Year Coming
Following a break, the Refinadora Costariccense de Petroleo (RECOPE) has asked for an increae in the price of gasoline, the first for the year and a lot higher than had been expected.

Once the Autoridad Reguladora de Servicios Publicos (ARESEP) finishes it's study on the price hike request, the price of a litre of gasoline will jump from the current ¢355 colones (us$0.77) to ¢369.65 (us$0.80) super; from ¢340 to ¢353.65 for regular and to ¢264.30 from ¢254 for diesel.

RECOPE made the request last week, citing increased price of crude oil on the world market, notwithstanding that yesterday the cost of a barrel of crude actually dropped to below us$49 per barrel.

The price, if approved, though there is no doubt that it won't be, is 40% higher than the cost of a litre of gasoline a year ago. More than ¢120 colones of each litre goes to taxes.

Costa Rica has the highest gasoline prices in the region.

"Madam" Trial Next Month
Sinaí Monge Muñoz, the woman suspected of operating a prostitution network that explioted minors is going to trial on February 8, the Fiscalía de Delitos Sexuales (Prosecutor's office for sex crimes) announced.

Sinaí, as she was known to her customers and underage sex workers, was arrested in October of 2003 following an difficult investigation into her activities, that included minors who offered sexual services to customers contacting the woman.

Sinaí operated out of her home in Hatillo 6, a suburb on the south side of San José and had been under investigation for some time. She first came to the attention of the authorities in 1990. Her brush with the law in 1994 absolved her on any criminal activity.

Since then, the laws that govern underage prostitution and protecting minors have been changed and the office of the Fiscalía de Delitos Sexuales was created. Undercover agents tried to infiltrate her operation but were unsuccessful.

Sinaí's real problems began in March of 2001, when a the television station Antena 3 from Spain took undercover footage of one of her assistants, a woman identified as Yolanda, who is still at large from the authorities, offering the undercover news crew underage girls dressed in school uniforms.

The news spread fast and Costa Rica was invaded by many different news teams looking for a story.

The first time that the underage sex theme was made global was in December of 2000 when a ABC 20/20 news report first aired the story in the United States.

In that report, them president Miguel Angel Rodríguez, was ridiculed by the news team when he stated in full camera that there were only 20-30 underage prostitutes in the country, contradicted a few seconds later by a street policemen saying that the number was really in the thousands.

Sinaí, if convicted could face between four and 10 years in prison for "proxenitismo" or promoting sexual favours that included minors.

Sinaí's partner, a man identified as Poltronieri, who was arrested at the same time as Sinaí, accepted the charges and was sentenced to fours in prison last October in a closed hearing.

The Sinaí trial is expected to last four weeks and more than 20 witnesses are expected to testify against her.

At first, it was believed that the woman was in a possession of a "black book" - a book that was supposed to have contained the names of her clients, important Costa Ricans who prevailed of her services. The book was never again mentioned and no "big" names have come out since the arrest.

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Banana Producing Countries Oppose New EU Tariff Costa Rican President, Abel Pacheco, along with the pesidents and foreign ministers from five othe banana-producing countries Wednesday issued a statement opposing a European Union (EU) plan to raise per ton tariff from 75 euro (us$97.5 dollars) to 230 euro (us$299 dollars) on their banana export starting in 2006. The new 230-euro per ton tariff, proposed by the EU in October 2004, is "unacceptable", said a statement signed by presidents of Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama and foreign minister of Honduras, at the end of their one-day meeting here to set a strategy on the EU tariff issue. The banana producing countries maintained the new EU duty would run contrary to World Trade Organization (WTO) rulings against preferential banana import rules. "The effects could be devastating to development in our countries," the statement said. The banana producers promised to negotiate a solution to the issue and said they will assess the development of related negotiations and make appropriate decisions at the end of the first quarter of the year. They also said they will send their joint statement immediately to the EU in Brussels, where their ambassadors will present a complaint together and work to achieve a satisfactory solution with the EU. Latin America is the most important banana producer and exporter in the world. Costa Rica produces 16% of the world total banana export, followed Colombia at 13%. Ecuador the host of the Latin America presidents produces 33% of the total banana production in the world, placing it as the fourth largest producer.