Costa Rica officially became the 38th member country of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Tuesday, the Paris-based international forum said.

The formal step comes after Costa Rica’s Congress last week gave the all-clear for the state to become the OECD’s fourth Latin American member alongside Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

Founded in 1961, the OECD is dedicated to promoting policies for economic and social well-being.

Its member countries, including the United States and France, move 60 percent of world trade and represent 80 percent of global gross domestic product.

Costa Rica had “introduced major reforms to align its legislation, policies and practices to OECD standards” during its five-year accession process, the body said.

Among other areas, the changes affected “competition policy and enforcement, a redesign of the national statistics system, the introduction of criminal liability of legal persons for foreign bribery and the establishment of a register of shareholders to ensure tax transparency,” it added.

Secretary-General Angel Gurria said the OECD was “impressed that the cross-party commitment to OECD accession that we witnessed during the accession process continued into the ratification phase, despite the pandemic”.

Brazil could be the next Latin American member for the club, after officially expressing interest in 2017.

The IMF on Tuesday praised Washington’s proposal for a minimum global tax rate of 15 percent on corporations, say it would unlock more resources for governments to invest in areas like education, health or infrastructure.

While there have been proposals for setting the rate at as much as 21 percent, “anything that is above what today in many places is 10 (percent) or even lower is a benefit,” said Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

The Washington-based crisis lender has long advocated an agreement on a common global tax, she said in a conversation with The Washington Post.

“Why? Because when we have it, there is no race to the bottom and less tax avoidance,” Georgieva said.

That means “more money in the public purse to invest in education and healthcare, and infrastructure, digitalization — all the good things we recognize we have to invest more into.”

However, she acknowledged the challenge in finding “the sweet spot” for the global economy between that idea and the best rate for national governments, given some countries have relied on low tax rates to compete.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries agreed in principle in 2015 to work on a plan to prevent corporations from evading taxes by moving headquarters to low-tax countries, a process known as base erosion and profit shifting.

Years of negotiations made little progress, but the discussions were revived with the arrival of President Joe Biden in the White House.

Last week, his administration proposed to OECD partners a tax rate on multinationals of at least 15 percent, the first time the United States has formally suggested a global minimum rate.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will attend next week’s meeting of finance ministers from the Group of Seven advanced nations in London, who are expected to endorse the 15 percent proposal.

Her deputy, Wally Adeyemo, told Reuters on Monday that he expects to see “a lot of unified support” for the plan from the G7 nations.

The eurozone’s largest economies, Germany and France, have expressed support for the US plan.

The other issue dominating debate is how to handle taxation of major tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook.

The challenge is how to ensure “fair distribution” of taxes where the profits are made and where the companies are located, Georgieva said.

Germany’s antitrust regulator said Tuesday it has opened an investigation into Google over anti-competitive practices, wielding a new law that has already been used to scrutinise other US tech giants.

The Federal Cartel Office will investigate European units of Google in Germany and Ireland, as well as and its parent company, Alphabet, in California, it said in a statement.

The investigation has an “outstanding cross-market significance” due to the breadth of Google’s digital products, Cartel office head Andreas Mundt said.

“Google’s business model is very fundamentally built on the processing of its users’ data,” Mundt said. “Google has a strategic advantage here due to its established access to competitively relevant data.”

A key question in the probe was whether consumers “have sufficient choice over the use of their data by Google if they want to use Google services”, he said.

The investigation follows the application of a new law giving the authorities more power to rein in big tech companies, with similar proceedings launched recently against Amazon and Facebook.

Under the amendment to Germany’s competition law passed in January, the watchdog said it now has more power to “intervene earlier and more effectively” against big tech companies, rather than simply punishing them for abuses of their dominant market position.

The Federal Cartel Office said last week it is examining whether Amazon has “an almost unchallengeable position of economic power”, having already launched two traditional abuse control proceedings.

The watchdog has also employed its new powers to widen the scope of an investigation into Facebook over its integration of virtual reality headsets.

The push to tighten legislation comes as big tech companies are facing increasing scrutiny around the globe, including in the United States, where Google and Facebook are facing antitrust suits.

American consumers were very upbeat about the current economic situation this month but more uncertain about the near-term outlook, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

With that mixed sentiment, the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index held steady in May at 117.2 from 117.5 in April — a figure revised sharply lower but still the highest since March 2020, when the pandemic shuttered the US economy.

Respondents this month expressed more confidence about current business conditions and job prospects, and the present situation index jumped more than 12 points to 144.3, the report said.

However, the expectations index fell nearly nine points to 99.1, with consumers less optimistic about the chance of finding jobs and about the business environment in the coming six months.

Confidence had rebounded sharply in recent months, “However, consumers’ short-term optimism retreated, prompted by expectations of decelerating growth and softening labor market conditions in the months ahead,” said Lynn Franco, senior director of economic indicators at The Conference Board.

Respondents’ more wary views also could reflect “rising inflation expectations and a waning of further government support,” Franco said in a statement.

As the US economic reopening has picked up speed, prices of many goods and services, especially those hardest hit by the Covid-19 shutdowns, have jumped, raising concerns of an inflationary spike.

However, central bankers at the Federal Reserve have repeatedly stressed that inflation pressures will be temporary and subside as the economy returns to normal and supply bottlenecks are resolved.

Franco said despite the concerns, “Overall, consumers remain optimistic, and confidence should remain resilient in the short term, as vaccination rates climb, Covid-19 cases decline further and the economy fully reopens.”