The president of the Asociación de Industrias de la República Dominicana, Celso Marranzini, considers that the time is right for the Central Bank to begin a gradual liberalizing of its monetary policies. He said that the banks have frozen their resources to prevent the expansion of the monetary supply thereby affecting the security of the foreign exchange rates. But he feels that if interest rates on savings rates continue to be high, forcing lending rates up, and inflation continues low, the year’s end results will be very adverse for the productive sectors, as evidenced by the first quarter of the year, in which manufacturing showed a 6% decline. Central Bank statistics indicate that there was a drop in the sugar industry, manufacturing and the industrial free zones, as a result of new competitive conditions in international markets. While he said that the country is in the middle of a political transition, this is not reason enough for not adopting the necessary measures to combat the recession.
Celso Marranzini said that one of the reasons behind the recession is the Central Bank’s restriction on the money supply to balance the fact of the government not handing over the pesos to pay for the foreign debt. The Bank has, instead, chosen to implement restrictive credit measures and issue bonds to remove money from circulation at the expense of job creation and economic growth.