A monument to entrepreneurship: today I posted my first idea on the Costa Rican Way. In the following days I will be posting more ideas, while I take this opportunity to invite you to upload yours. The following is the text placed in the Via.

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Let’s celebrate the entrepreneur in Costa Rica. Let us recognize their historical contribution. Let us applaud those who have provided opportunities with their courage, determination, risk, perseverance and tenacity.

Let us celebrate those who make their homeland by doing business in the country, regardless of whether they are Costa Ricans, Catalans, Italians, Americans or Colombians. Our country is forged among all of us who live in Costa Rica.

The businesswoman who took the plunge and opened a grocery store. The entrepreneur who overcame inertia and opened a dental clinic in his neighborhood. The entrepreneur who decided to open a kindergarten and grow one student at a time. The businessman who gambled everything he had to import from abroad and earn a margin by selling. The entrepreneur who borrowed money and started selling house by house. The entrepreneur who mortgaged his house to open a restaurant, or the executive who resigned to start a new company independently. The entrepreneur who migrated from her country to set up a small hotel on a beach in Costa Rica. The entrepreneur who expands his house with a room for rent.

Private enterprise moves the world, because it is driven by heroes and heroines who deserve recognition and reverence. Individual initiative and collective effort generate opportunities, openings, spaces and prosperity. We must make the value of entrepreneurship visible through lasting recognition of those who make it possible. Let us inaugurate the monument on the “Day of Entrepreneurship” that we must create for this purpose.

Let the government provide a privileged space, and let private enterprise finance it.

Entrepreneurs have made the difference. Let us celebrate entrepreneurship and innovation, to begin with, through the “Monument to Entrepreneurship”. Let us do everything in our power to raise them to the level of prestige they deserve. Then let us legislate, facilitate, take measures and do the impossible to promote more companies, more initiatives, more entrepreneurship, less permitting, less restriction and less bureaucracy, better infrastructure and resources. Costa Rica should be a paradise for entrepreneurs that with honesty, solidarity, work and vision, drive the country to new levels of welfare.

Let us stimulate entrepreneurship and private enterprise. Let’s acknowledge it forcefully… because what is celebrated, is repeated.