Days after leftwinger Luis Guillermo Solis cruised to victory in Costa Rica’s presidential elections, US-based giants Bank of America and Intel announced huge job cuts the country.

Nearly 3,000 people will lose their jobs.

Microchip firm Intel said it was reducing its assembly and testing operations in the central American country, resulting in 1,500 redundancies.

About 2,700 people have been employed at an assembly plant set up in 1998.

Intel’s business made up just over 20 per cent of Costa Rica’s overall exports in 2013.

“We are going to phase out our manufacturing operations in Costa Rica over the next six months,” said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy.

“The work done in Costa Rica will be moved to assembly testing sites in China, Malaysia and Vietnam.”

The computer chip firm announced in mid-January it was going to lay off 5 per cent of its worldwide workforce in 2014, cutting around 5,400 jobs.

And only hours after Intel’s announcement, Bank of America subsidiary BA Continuum said that it was shutting down a call centre in Costa Rica that employs 1,400 people.

Costa Rica Investment Promotion Agency (CINDE) director Gabriela Llobet said the company would start laying off people over the next 12 months.