The Public Procurement Act: what changed for foreign suppliers

Costa Rica's General Public Procurement Act (Ley General de Contratación Pública, Ley N.º 9986) consolidated into a single body of law what was previously dispersed, and established the electronic system for the entire cycle: publication of the tender documents, submission of bids, clarifications, award and appeals. For a foreign bidder this has a direct consequence: there is no parallel channel, and whatever is not in the electronic file does not exist.

Procedures are organised mainly by contract value, with common rules on deadlines and evaluation. That allows a supplier to anticipate which procedure an institution will use even before the tender is published, based on the estimated contract amount.

The challenge regime is regulated and short. Objections to the tender documents and appeals against the award carry brief, non-extendable deadlines: missing one of them cannot be repaired afterwards with substantive arguments, however sound they may be.

The operational recommendation is to have the corporate package settled in advance (powers of attorney, apostilles, official translations, the representative's digital signature) because the procedural timeline leaves no room to arrange it on the fly.

This article is informational and does not constitute legal advice or replace review of the applicable legal text.