| Daily News - Monday, 28 November 2005 |
Major reports in all of the nation's papers are pointing to ever-increasing pressure from President Leonel Fernandez to get the tax reform through Congress. Meeting at the Internal Revenue offices as well as at the Customs Department, together with meetings with congressional leaders all point towards a renewed effort to get the legislation on track. According to Hoy, there are at least ten discussion points that remain on the agenda. After Friday's meeting, with Fernandez in attendance, the group decided to meet at the Internal Revenue offices on Saturday, at Customs on Sunday and at the Santo Tomas Campus of the PUCMM in Santo Domingo today. Presidency Technical Secretary Temistocles Montas told El Caribe reporters that he felt that a deal was near, as the tripartite committee worked on the 10 points. Diario Libre said that the tripartite committee - made up of business, legislators and government representatives - would work on the sticking points over the weekend and have something for the President to send to Congress on Tuesday. Yesterday, in the frontier town of Pedernales, President Fernandez said that tax legislation could wait no longer and that he was sending the proposal to the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday. He said that he was gratified to learn that the business community had approved the 1.5% tax on anticipated gross sales. Among the accords arrived at during yesterday's session were special treatment for businesses that had suffered losses, the conditions that will apply to natural disasters and the 1.5% tax, but the issue of energy costs are still under discussion, especially the difference in the price of diesel fuel, which allows it to be less expensive than gasoline. The tripartite committee meetings were attended by the head of CONEP, Elena Viyella de Paliza, the government's economic team, headed by Temistocles Montas, Miguel Cocco and Juan Hernandez, and the Finance Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, headed by Marino Collante. Diario Libre says today that the fuel question will be dealt with during today's meeting of the committee at PUCMM. According to Elena Viyella, the central issue at today's meeting will be the cost of energy and fuels. According to a quote in the Diario Libre, Viyella de Paliza told reporters, "Nothing is agreed, until everything is agreed."
The Director General of the Customs Department ordered all cars that are five years old or older to be returned by their consignees, to their original destinations. If they are not shipped out within ten days the Customs officials will seize the vehicles. The same decree also applies to electric equipment currently at the different port facilities. Also included in the decree are vehicles that have been salvaged by insurers in the United States, because such vehicles are banned under decree 671-02. The Customs office told reporters from Listin Diario that that they had notified shippers last October that there was a ban on cars five years old or older, based on Laws 147-00. The move was also communicated to the Ministry of Foreign Relations so that it could advise the different Dominican consulates not to authorize any shipping documents for such vehicles. In today's Listin Diario, Customs chief Miguel Cocco reaffirmed his determination to keep to the letter of the law regarding older vehicles. However, he did explain to journalists that the law does not apply to heavy- duty equipment such as semi-tractors, dump trucks and construction equipment. Because of their high initial costs this type of equipment when new is too expensive for local companies to acquire. The trucking union is one of the strongest in the Dominican Republic.
Next year, the Dominican government is proposing to spend US$88 billion on social programs, mainly in the health and education fields, as part of its RD$225 billion budget. The projected budget currently being worked on by the Budget Office will be RD$36 billion more than the 2005 budget. In spite of the increase in social spending, in the past social programs have been affected by internal political situations and external issues such as inflationary processes that have reduced their impact. According to these figures, printed in Hoy, RD$55 billion will be set aside to pay foreign debts, and capital expenditures will total RD$40 billion. The budget will benefit from foreign programs already underway and whose money is destined to specific high priority programs. The government expects to pull in RD$180 billion in taxes this coming year, and receive RD$40.0 billion from foreign sources.
The Dominican foreign debt has risen by more than 75% during the last four years, hitting US$6.448 billion during the first half of 2005. This is up from US$3.679 billion in the year 2000. These numbers were released by the Ministry of Finance Department of Public Credit, and show a total increase of US$2.769 billion over the past four year period, an average of US$615 million per year. However, on a more positive note, the statistics also show an increase in the hard currency reserves that exceeds 200% from a year ago. From US$577 million in 2004, the reserves have now reached US$1.773 billion. In spite of the influx of United States dollars, the Central Bank cannot let them flow into the local exchange market, according to El Caribe, because the IMF accords "prohibit" this move.
The application of the terms of the free trade agreement with the United States is likely to adversely affect some sectors of the Dominican economy, but others, such as the forestry sector, could do well. The nation imports US$300 million is forest products each year and the local forestry sector supplies just 12% of the demand. In areas like Jarabacoa and Restauracion, there are large plantations of forests developed with wood harvesting in mind. According to Bernabe Manon, the head of the Dominican Forestry Board, forestry could become a major business in the DR. He is backed up by professor Alberto Rodriguez, the head of the National Association of Forestry Professionals, and Raul Risek, the head of the National Association of Forestry Enterprises (ANAFORE). According to these spokesmen, forest products are some of the few that can compete successfully because of the captive market of some US$300 million. However, Manon warns that changes are needed in order to make the most of the conditions presented by the DR-CAFTA. He cited the need for improved technology, driers and saw mills, as well as better seeds. One of the big advantages that local forests have is the quality of the wood, generally superior to imported varieties. The spokespeople point out that because of the tropical location, many of the woods produced here are not found in the United States, especially mahogany, considered to be one of the finest in the world. According to the experts, the local forestry industry has the capacity to supply 70% of local demand, promoting an economy of scale that is ecologically sustainable, that is continuous and that creates a positive chain reaction for society. Manon told reporters from Listin Diario that in order for the sector to "take off" it needed a legal framework that would guarantee investments made in the sector. He said that 27% of Dominican territory could be converted into forestry projects.
Economist, diplomat and writer Bernardo Vega was in the United States carrying out some speaking engagements in Washington and New York. He watched the exit of Father Ruquoy and the priest's interrogation by the Minister of the Interior and the Police, Franklin Almeyda. According to Vega, it has been over 40 years since the Dominican Republic received such bad publicity, especially relating to priests and their treatment. Back then, the Trujillo regime was targeting bishops Panal and Thomas Reilly. Now, according to Vega, the sin committed by Ruquoy and Hartley, also both foreigners, is to have denounced what Dominicans know is happening, but don't want to admit: that the Migration Department, with the support of the Dominican armed forces and the Ministry of Labor, still authorize the importation of Haitians to cut sugar care at a time when all Dominicans are complaining of the excess presence of Haitians in the country. Vega asks "How is it possible, at this place and time, to continue the importation, with official sanction, of cane cutters, who, once in the country, can opt to go and work wherever they choose?" In the past, there was a dictatorship and the field bosses impeded any Haitian from leaving the "batey" (a migrant worker's housing unit, generally very basic and without any normal public services such as water, electricity or sanitation). Under these circumstances, the repatriation of cane cutters was possible, but today it is impossible.
President Fernandez's popularity would increase if he were to announce a ban on importing cane cutters, and at the same time demand that sugar growers and mill owners recruit cane cutters from the thousands of Haitians already in the country. They do not do this now because it would cost them more money. Because of this, they prefer to pay Haitians from Haiti who are willing to accept lower pay and worse conditions than their countrymen already living in the Dominican Republic would.
Another sin that both of the priests committed was to denounce the abysmal conditions in which the cane cutters are forced to live. Nonetheless, the main employer of Haitian cane cutters in the DR is Central Romana, and Vega says that he has not heard of any outcries of mistreatment from their employees, not because the priests can't visit their fields, but because apparently the working conditions there are different. In consequence, the problem is limited to certain sugar growers, and state and private mill owners or administrators. Vega asks, "How must a military or migration officer feel when one day he is deporting a Haitian from the northwest across the border at Dajabon, and the next month he is ordered to bring him back across at Pedernales? " This totally incongruous situation is obvious. In the southern United States, the blacks cut sugar cane until they became soldiers in the Second World War. The result was the mechanization of cane cutting. In Cuba, since 1933 only Cubans can cut sugar cane, with no regard to race, since the Jamaicans and Haitians were deported. Vega suggests that if we prohibit the importation of Haitians under official sanctions, the options are to either employ local Haitians or mechanize. Both alternatives will increase costs, but to remedy this there is the privilege granted to our sugar growers that allows for extraordinarily high local prices for sugar. Vega says that if we pay so dearly for sugar, the least we can demand is that the sugar industry cease the practice of importing cane cutters.
The senator for Santiago Rodriguez, Dario Gomez was gunned down at a friend's house on 11 December 2001, later dying of the gunshot wounds inflicted that night. On Saturday, magistrate Alexis Geraldino sentenced the men who shot Gomez to 30-year jail terms, the maximum allowed under Dominican penal law. The prosecutor also asked for the accused to pay the court costs, and the joint civil prosecutor requested a compensation payment of RD$5 million each. The convicted killers are Ramon Antonio Taveras, aka El Gringo; Ernesto Antonio Melendez, aka El Chino; Pedro Urbano Pina, aka Kelly; Domingo Minaya Jimenez, aka El Mago. The magistrate reduced the civil penalty to RD$5.0 million to each of the parties in the civil suit, including the victim's mother, his driver, a sister and the lawyers themselves.
Nonetheless, as reported in most of today's newspapers, Dario Gomez's family is not satisfied, and is insisting that the Justice Department continue investigating the case until it finds the people who ordered the murder. The former senator's sister, Celeste Gomez, who replaced her brother in his senate seat, told reporters that she was convinced that the instigators had not been identified. She said that she found it illogical that four individuals would decide to rob a modest house in the Vista Hermosa neighborhood of Santo Domingo where the senator for Santiago Rodriguez just happened to be visiting. She reminded the journalists that her brother was active in the legislative processes attacking drug trafficking, and tax evasion, as well as pushing for faster extradition processes for criminals. According to the report in Listin Diario, Aura Celeste Gomez told reporters that she believed that the investigators are aware of the identity of the people behind her brother's murder.
Lisbet Binet, the woman who gave birth to a set of quadruplets this weekend, had not been treated with fertility drugs, according to her doctor Claudia Rincon Tatis. The physician who attended her during her final three weeks, Dr. Jose Garrido Calderon had spoken to the press about the effects of fertility medication on multiple births. The multiple conception resulted from natural sexual relations with her husband. The young mother, who is just 22, was treated at the Centro Oriental de Ginecologia, Obstetricia y Especialidades. The four babies' condition has improved, with two still on ventilators and two doing just fine. All four are being fed with their mother's milk. First Lady Margarita Cedeno de Fernandez has promised to ask her husband to donate a house for the children to grow up in.
While baseball teams in the frozen north are busy wheeling and dealing, the Dominican Winter Baseball League is getting hotter and hotter.
Last weekend the Aguilas Cibaenas extended their winning streak to four games, shutting out the Tigres del Licey 9-0 in the "Valley of Death", the Cibao Stadium. The Aguilas starting pitcher was big leaguer Jose Lima, who pitched just five innings of near perfect baseball, throwing just 50 pitches. Young Tony Pena Jr., Alberto Castillo and Edwin Encarnacion were the big guns for the home team. With the victory, the Aguilas are just 1.5 games behind the leading Leones de Escogido who came from behind to defeat the Estrellas Orientales from San Pedro de Macoris 5-4 at Santo Domingo's Quisqueya Stadium. In the other game on the schedule, the team from La Romana, the Azucareros, defeated the Gigantes from San Francisco de Macoris 4-0.
Standings
| TEAM | Won - Lost | Average | Games behind |
| Escogido | 19 - 11 | .633 | -0- |
| Aguilas | 18 - 13 | .581 | 1.5 |
| Licey | 18 - 11 | .581 | 1.5 |
| Azucareros | 15 - 15 | .500 | 4.0 |
| Estrellas | 12 - 18 | .400 | 7.0 |
| Gigantes | 9 - 21 | .300 | 10.0 |
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