Omg!
I've been living in POP for 11 years; I visit Santiago @ every 3 - 5 weeks.
* In my experience, nearly everything costs 30 - 50% more in POP than it does in Santiago. Excluding food & gasoline.
* Santiago: fewer foreigners, less $, more competition.
*ex. I tried to buy some distilled water; I have 8 batteries in my inverter; in POP - sold by the liter only; in Santiago - every large hardware store sells it by the gallon. Why? More inverters, batteries, $, & Gringos in POP.
Less $ in Santiago than in Puerto Plata?
Are you serious?
Santiago has hypermarkets which take advantage of certain economies of scale
due to the larger presence of a middle/upper class in the Santiago area than in Puerto Plata.
That's why Santiago has a Pricemart, a large Supermercado Nacional, large shopping malls geared towards the local market, etc while Puerto Plata doesn't have those large stores or a large mall that caters to the locals. The malls in Puerto Plata are on average small and geared more to tourists. Even the best supermarket in Puerto Plata pales in size compared to the supermarkets in Santiago.
Heck, even San Francisco de Macor?s has a sizable middle class to support a very large Multicentro La Sirena -- something that again, doesn't exist in Puerto Plata.
Economies of scale allows for more of a product to be sold for less, which explains why distilled water is sold by the gallon in Santiago vs. much smaller and less wealthy Puerto Plata where its sold by the litter.
Expatriates do dominate certain small regional economies within the country such as Cabarete, Sos?a, etc where expat owned and operate businesses are quite numerous and form a sizeable portion of the local economy. However, that is NOT the case in Santiago or Santo Domingo, the two cities which are home to nearly half the country's population, the bulk of the middle and upper classes, and where at least 70% to 80% of the country's economy revolves around.
I don't know how anyone can possibly believe that POP has more well off people than Santiago. The places are not even on the same level in infrastructural development and modernity.
Sometimes I get the feeling that some expatriates actually believe the DR's economy revolves around them... Newsflash, it doesnt! :ermm:
-NALs