France has excluded Costa Rica from the list of tax havens it created at the beginning of 2010, according to a statement on the Latin American newswire Informa-Tico.

The development was welcomed by the minister for Costa Rica’s treasury department, Fernando Herrero, who said it would benefit the investment climate in the country.

The French ambassador in San José notified the Costa Rican government in an official note on the 24 February.

Herrero said the fact that France had excluded the country from its list of uncooperative nations would not only attract investment into Costa Rica, but increase the security of investment, and also validate the country’s efforts in meeting international tax requirements.

To date, the Latin American jurisdiction has signed 12 agreements on the exchange of information with Argentina, France, Holland, Mexico, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Norway and Sweden.

These efforts also saw Costa Rica excluded from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s list of uncooperative countries in July 2011, and added to the list of country’s who had substantially implemented the international standard.