Nals himself, the DR1 "economist" posted that Leon Jimenez had an annual profit of USD$600M/year. And he's a reasonably educated guy living in the US. But this is typical of what many Dominicans think.
DV8 - thanks for posting those numbers - however I have to confess I'm a little skeptical that Brugal is making $100M annual profit when we're calculating the much larger E Leon Jimenez at $80M. Remember, the entire country only does $20B/year.
Too many of the numbers in this country are hidden in the dark and are distorted. But one thing I've found - is no Dominicans on the top Forbes lists.
Please, if I'm off base, enlighten me!
Adrian
I believe I added the word
"supposedly true" to my original post.
In any case, while its true that the GDP on an exchange rate basis is a little over $20b, that actually is a little misleading and for that reason there is not a single economist in the world that compares economies on the basis of GDP on an exchange rate basis.
To take into account the value of a dollar in each country (ie. US$1 in the U.S. doesn't buy the same amount of goods/services as US$1 buys in the DR, for example), the GDP has to be converted from pesos to dollars through the Power Purchasing Parity, also known as PPP.
GDP (PPP) for the DR is over US$77 billion, in fact that makes the Dominican economy the largest in the Caribbean since the figure beats Puerto Rico's GDP by a few billions.
What does that mean? Basically, the amount of wealth that is produced in the Dominican Republic gives a purchasing power equivalent to US$77 billion.
To put this through another perspective, the E. Le?n Jimenes size in PPP dollars would surpass $2 billion. In other words, the effects E. Le?n Jimenes group has on the Dominican economy is the equivalent of a $2 billion corporation in the U.S.
In the same manner, a person earning US$1 million in the U.S. will not have the same lifestyle (assuming such person doesn't live beyond his means) as someone earning $1 million in the DR. In this case, a person earning US$1 million in the DR will live the equivalent lifestyle of a person earning US$4 million in the U.S.
For this reason, your comparison is slightly misleading because using crude numbers comparisons will not actually reflect the purchasing power of US$1 in each respective economy, which would allow a completely different lifestyle in each country given identical incomes.
And yes, many numbers are "hidden" in the DR, but that is because most companies are private enterprises and in the case when they do offer stocks, most of it is owned by the family that founded the business.
-NALs