TLC Only Way to New Jobs, Arias Says
President-elect Oscar Arias Sanchez said on Sunday, while touring the area of Guanacaste, that the Tratado Libre de Comercio (TOC - free trade agreement with the United States known as CAFTA - is the only way to create jobs.

Arias, while thanking the people of Guanacaste for their support, reiterated his support for the TLC, adding that he firmly believed a small country like Costa Rica needs foreign markets.

"Either we take the path of development or we go backwards and, one day, we will end up competing with Haiti," Arias told the Spanish language daily newspaper Al Dia.

Arias rebuffed the criticism from the anti-free trade group, the Residents' Defenders. "They turn a blind eye to the 500,000 jobs which depend on Costa Rican exports, " he said.

Lizbeth Quesada, an official of the Residents' Defenders, complained last Thursday that so many subsidized agricultural products had flooded the country, and the Costa Rican farming sector will die as a result.

Commercials in support of the TLC has have been broadcast both on television and radio, with the message that Costa Rican needs to open it's products to more markets.

One radio commercial makes the relationship of a farmer being able to plant and reap more crops if he had more land and that the TLC is like giving the farmer that additional land.

The trade agreement was signed by the five Central American governments- Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica -  last year, however, Costa Rica is the only signatory country that has yet to ratify it by the legislature.

The trade pact is already in place in El Salvador (in effect on March 1) and in Honduras and Nicaragua, where it came into effect on April 1.