The news daily El Siglo reports that, according to statistics provided by the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry, 95% of the revenue generated during 1998 by the tax on petrol went to paying off foreign debt and to reconstruction after Hurricane Georges. Until the hurricane, the government was depositing most of the tax revenues in the Central Bank, which used the money to pay off bilateral and multilateral debts. After the hurricane, the government stopped making these deposits because it won a moratorium on debt payments until March 1999. Even so, RD$2.8471 billion, or 50.7% of the petrol tax revenue generated in 1998, went to paying external debt. In the three months after the hurricane the Government poured RD$2.5116 billion (44.7%) into housing and agriculture reconstruction programs. The rest of the 1998 petrol tax revenues went to municipalities (RD$224.4 million) and political parties (RD$28 million).
