Costa Rica expects 6 pct growth by 2014 -president

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica Dec 15 (Reuters) - Costa Rica's president sees the economy growing by as much as 6 percent a year by 2014 as the country invests in infrastructure and trims government red tape.

Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica's first woman president who took office in May, unveiled her government's economic plan late on Tuesday night for the jungle-covered nation known as a popular tourist destination.

Chinchilla told Reuters in September that she expects growth of 4.5 percent this year and 5 percent in 2011. [ID:nN21180711]

Her government faces a mounting fiscal deficit, seen reaching 5.2 percent of gross domestic product by the end of the year, the highest in the region according to a report released this week by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, or ECLAC.

In order to support government spending programs and help reduce unemployment, Chinchilla is pushing for tax reform that would increase federal revenue.

REGION SLOW TO RECOVERY

Many of the isthmus nations of Central America have been slow to recovery from the recent financial crisis and global downturn.

El Salvador, a leading coffee producer that depends on remittances sent from abroad, embodies some of the dilemmas.

The economy will have grown less than 1 percent this year chiefly because remittances only rebounded by about 2.5 percent from their 2009 levels rather than the hoped-for 5 percent, the central bank said on Wednesday.

High unemployment in the United States can weaken earning power for immigrants and have a knock-on effect of sapping remittances.

The El Salvador economy should grow by 2.5 percent next year, the government has said.

Panama, which enjoys revenue from its emblematic canal and a robust banking sector, has outpaced its regional peers. Panama's economy grew 8.4 percent in the third quarter of the year compared to the same period in 2009, the government said on Wednesday. [N15164232]

Nicaragua exports - dominated by coffee, gold and agricultural goods - increased nearly 30 percent this year to close at a record $1.85 billon, the government said on Wednesday.

The United States absorbs nearly 30 percent of local exports with Venezuela as the second-largest importer of Nicaragua goods.

(Reporting by Alex Leff in San Jose, Nelson Renteria in San Salvador and Ivan Castro in Managua; Written by Mica Rosenberg and Patrick Rucker; Editing by Diane Craft)