On Monday evening Costa Rica became the first nation to ratify the free trade agreement (FTA) between the Dominican Republic and the five member countries of the Central American common market (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua). Yesterday a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Frederic Emán Zadé, revealed that Nicaragua recently informally notified the DR that it will drop its efforts to renegotiate the terms of the FTA’s market access protocol ("Miami Protocol") and submit the treaty package as-is for ratification by its National Assembly. That would leave only Honduras as demanding a renegotiation, making it less likely that the DR would agree to go back to the bargaining table.
