UAE: Central America’s Opportunity

Family businesses tend to think in generations. However, their wealth structures, sources of capital, and expansion strategies do not always evolve with the same long-term perspective.

For decades, Central American business families have focused primarily on the United States and Europe. Those markets will continue to be fundamental, but the global economic map has changed. Today, it is essential to incorporate the United Arab Emirates as a new hub for investment, financing, wealth structuring, and international growth.

The goal is to establish a real platform from which a family business can engage with international banks, sovereign wealth funds, asset managers, institutional investors, private equity funds, and potential strategic partners; professionalize the governance of its wealth; and project its businesses toward the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Costa Rica also has an advantage that no other Central American country, and very few in Latin America, currently possesses: a particularly deep legal and commercial framework with the Emirates.

The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement on Trade and Investment —known as CEPA— between Costa Rica and the United Arab Emirates entered into force on April 1, 2025. It was the first trade agreement signed by Costa Rica with a Middle Eastern economy and the first signed by the Emirates with a Latin American country.

Its advantages are concrete.

First, 95.99% of Costa Rican exports to the Emirates obtained immediate tariff elimination, while 98% will benefit from immediate or gradual elimination within a maximum period of ten years.

Second, CEPA establishes clearer rules and incentives for the cross-border provision of services, with commitments in sectors such as professional services, logistics, maritime transport, and financial services. For an economy such as Costa Rica’s, whose main asset is increasingly knowledge, this component may be even more important than tariff reductions.

Third, it incorporates trade facilitation and customs cooperation mechanisms aimed at reducing costs, simplifying procedures, and accelerating the clearance of goods through electronic documentation and processes.

Finally, it includes a digital trade chapter that maintains the practice of not imposing tariffs on electronic transmissions, recognizes the importance of cybersecurity, and creates a framework for cooperation in the development of the digital economy.

CEPA does not operate in isolation. Costa Rica and the Emirates also have an agreement to avoid double taxation, in force since 2021, and a bilateral investment promotion and protection agreement in force since October 2020. Together, these instruments provide an uncommon legal and tax architecture: preferential trade access, bilateral tax rules, and international investment protection.

There is still an incomplete image of the Emirates in our region, associated almost exclusively with oil, tourism, and real estate development. The reality is far more sophisticated.

Dubai is one of the world’s leading financial centers.

The Dubai International Financial Centre, DIFC, closed 2025 with more than 500 wealth and asset management firms, 1,052 regulated entities, and 1,289 entities connected to business families and family wealth. Its Family Wealth Centre is specifically dedicated to supporting the governance, succession, preservation, and growth of multigenerational wealth. Along the same lines is the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, DMCC, including its DMCC Coffee Centre and DMCC Wealth Hub, among many other highly innovative initiatives.

Abu Dhabi Global Market, ADGM, meanwhile, offers vehicles such as foundations, trusts, holding companies, special-purpose vehicles, and licenses for family offices. In the first quarter of 2026, assets under management from ADGM grew 57% year-on-year and the center had 179 fund and asset managers.

Both centers operate under legal frameworks directly based on English common law, with English applicable law, specialized courts, independent financial regulators, and an international community of banks, lawyers, wealth managers, insurers, and investment advisers.

The scale of the ecosystem can be seen at Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW). Its 2025 edition brought together more than 35,000 participants, more than 800 exhibitors, and representatives of institutions connected to more than US$62 trillion in assets. It is not simply a conference: it is one of the places where those who allocate a significant share of global capital come together. It is no coincidence that more than 53% of global GDP was represented at ADFW.

The United Arab Emirates is also home to some of the largest sovereign wealth funds on the planet and a growing concentration of private and institutional capital. For Central American companies, having a presence in this ecosystem can mean access to co-investors, acquisition financing, infrastructure capital, technology partnerships, and partners capable of supporting international expansion.

The Emirates are not waiting for other countries to define the financial future either.

They have developed specific regulatory frameworks for digital assets, institutional cryptocurrencies, digital securities, tokenized funds, fiat-referenced currencies, and other applications of distributed ledger technology. They are leaders in legislation covering virtual assets, digital securities, derivatives, digital asset funds, and fiat-referenced tokens. Their DLT Foundations regime also makes it possible to use legal structures adapted to blockchain-based projects, token-based governance, and smart contracts.

For a Central American business family, this may open future alternatives for structuring funds, fractionalizing assets, attracting international investors, financing real estate or infrastructure projects, and developing traceability and settlement solutions.

The Emirates maintain a highly favorable tax environment. There is no general personal income tax, and the corporate tax regime provides for a 0% rate on qualifying income of certain persons established in free zones and a 9% rate on income that does not qualify, subject to compliance with specific conditions. The legislation also allows, under certain requirements, certain family foundations to receive tax-transparent treatment. CEPA includes highly advantageous conditions.

The real opportunity is to establish a professional family office or investment platform, with corporate governance, investment policies, succession planning, family protocols, and organized access to international opportunities.

Costa Rica can play a central role in this process.

Through its preferential access under CEPA, it can become the coordination point for Central American projects targeting the Emirates and, at the same time, the platform from which Emirati investors enter Central America.

This opportunity is also supported by exceptional institutional assets: the Embassy of Costa Rica in the United Arab Emirates. Under the leadership of Ambassador Francisco Chacón, who has served for more than nine years and is dean of the diplomatic corps accredited in the country, the mission has accumulated deep knowledge of the culture, institutions, and main political and economic actors in the Emirates. For its part, the Costa Rica Business Council in UAE, established in 2024 as a business organization associated with the powerful Dubai Chambers (the official Government of Dubai entity that brings together the Emirate’s business chambers), functions as a source of access to information and strategic support of great value to Costa Rican and Central American firms that have decided to establish themselves in the United Arab Emirates. The Council also has strategic alliances with Abu Dhabi Chambers and the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, as well as relationships with sovereign wealth funds.

That experience, continuity, and extensive network of relationships represent strategic capital for Costa Rica and, by extension, for Central American companies seeking to engage with this region. In a market where trust, cultural knowledge, and personal relationships are decisive, having an active, experienced, and well-positioned embassy constitutes an advantage that we must recognize and leverage.

The legal framework already exists. The capital is present. The financial centers are open. Connectivity places the Emirates between Asia, Africa, and Europe, and interest in Latin America is increasing.

It is now up to our family businesses to expand the map, build relationships, and present concrete projects. Costa Rica has the opportunity to become the economic bridge between Central America and the United Arab Emirates.

We must not let it pass.

By: David Gutiérrez Swanson
Presidente del Costa Rica Business Council en los Emiratos Árabes Unidos