In his 27 February speech, President Balaguer stressed his stand in not contracting foreign loans. He emphasized his efforts to carry out priority works with funds from the government’s own sources.
He went on to say that he agrees with the privatization of the large public corporations and the “so-called” government companies but felt the time was not right because they would leave thousands of fathers of families without means of support and that unemployment would reach levels of great concern. (Balaguer has preferred a form of privatization whereby the state companies are strangled by their own debts and thus diminished in value, obliging their de facto privatization as is the case of the Cement Factory, Dominicana Airlines, the CDE and many others.)
He continued to speak against the privatization of the Consejo Estatal del Azúcar that languishes in the same sort of situation that has characterized the last years of Dr Balaguer’s government. He added that: “I do not support, nor will I support, the privatization of the Consejo Estatal del Azúcar, because they hold the best land in the nation and that land, while remaining in the hands of the government, guarantees that it may be employed as an instrument for social justice, such as in Agrarian Reform programs.”