By  the A.M. Costa Rica  staff

This week, Golfito Duty-Free shopping center located in Golfito Canton in Puntarenas Province, opens to the public complying with the sanitary measures ordered by the Ministry of Health, announced the Development Board of the South Region, in charge of managing the shopping center.

The duty-free shopping center, known as the Deposito Libre de Golfito in Spanish, was created in 1990 to promote tourism and increase commerce in that area after the decline of the banana operations there.

It is a commercial center where all products are tax-exempt, and therefore at much lower prices than in the rest of the country. It is located on Avenue 8 next to the Golfito airport.

The first change is the schedule for the prior registration of customers, which is enabled from Monday to Friday, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Hours slightly differ for Saturdays and Sundays. On weekends, customers will be attended from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Regarding the area inside the duty-free, the stores are open from Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Stores will not open on weekends, until further notice.

The staff of the shopping center will be in compliance with sanitary measures and enforcing measures such as the social distance of 1.8 meters between people, customers must wash their hands before and after touching any item, customers must enter with a mask, in addition to allowing entry only to the 50% of customer capacity.

People who are detected with cold symptoms will not be allowed to enter the shopping center.

Since May 18, the health ministry ordered the closure of the Golfito duty-free shopping center due to an employee who tested positive for covid-19. However, the representatives assure that the entire place was under strong hygiene measures during the period that it was closed.


In February, the duty-free shopping center announced a special high-tech shopping card meant to track purchases, activated with a fingerprint at the time a shopper enters the duty-free zone.

To obtain the card, the customer must present an ID at the customs post located in the duty-free zone. This will allow buyers to purchase the card the same day they will make their purchases.

Also, the Ministry of Finance made available an application for the buyer to see in real-time, the purchases. The app can be downloaded on their website.

According to the ministry, the app can be downloaded on any smartphone or any device with internet access to immediately register the user purchases.

Another improvement is to allow people to buy as many times as they want without limits. This is because, before those changes, people could only buy at the outlets once every six months.

Another change is the elimination of merchandise checkpoints for the review and authorization to take the products out of the duty-free zone.

These improvements were announced in October 2019 with the plan to start in January. But at the request of the dealers, who must verify the new system and close inventories at the beginning of the year, the new application was rescheduled to start in February “in order to guarantee a good service to those who visit the duty-free deposit,” said Vladimir Villalobos from the ministry.

All products within the free zone are tax-free. Both Costa Ricans and foreigners can enter the commercial zone.

More information on the Golfito Duty-Free Commercial Center can be found by calling (506) 2775-0496.





----------------
Have you visited the Golfito duty-free? We would like to know your thoughts on this story. Send your comments to news@amcostarica.com

Alert for contraband dietary products
➡️ Continue reading