The economists Andres and Elizabeth Dauhajre maintain that the Dominican government’s decision to seek import quotas on 8 agricultural items will not help the local farmers to become more efficient. They also believe that such quotas will force consumers to pay prices that are significantly higher than those prevailing in international markets for these foodstuffs.
To substantiate their claim Mr. and Mrs. Dauhajre point to a comparative analysis on the ratio of production costs to crop yields for rice, beans, sugar, maize, garlic, tomatoes, and onions which shows that, for the most part, the Dominican farmers’ operational costs greatly exceed those of others from competing nations. They single out maize, rice, and sugar as the items registering the lowest yield per crop.
They argue that because of this, domestic consumers were paying almost three times the world price for a pound of sugar.
According to above economists, if the government had kept tariff levels in the 40 percent region, as mandated by WTO stipulations, the influx of imports would have meant savings totaling some RD$260 million for the nation’s poorest consumers in this year alone. They advocate the replacement of meager indirect subsidies to farmers and call for the introduction of a direct assistance program similar to Mexico’s PROCAMPO. Such a program would only encourage the production of food crops where the local farmers have some comparative advantage.