The heads of two important DR business associations have expressed their support for the idea of "dollarizing" the Dominican economy, i.e., pegging the Dominican peso explicitly to the U.S. dollar at a 1:1 ratio, or creating a single monetary unit for the Western Hemisphere anchored to the dollar. Interviewed by the news daily Listin Diario, both Celso Marranzini, president of the National Council of Private Enterprises (CONEP), and Andr?s Dauhajre, president of the National Union of Businessmen (UNE), said that the idea of a single currency offers more benefits than drawbacks. Marranzini expressed particularly strong support, saying that dollarization would stop the headache of devaluations, eliminate fiscal deficits, maintain the purchasing power of Dominicans and facilitate trade flows. But he cautioned that the switch to dollarization will be gradual, even among economies (such as the DR’s) already heavily influenced by the dollar. Marranzini said that CONEP is considering organizing a seminar to bring together businessmen, government officials, economists, political party leaders and other interested parties to examine and the debate the idea. Meanwhile, Ignacio M?ndez, head of the Association of Industrial Firms of Herrera (AEIH), while acknowledging possible benefits of a single currency, declared that "so far we see it as a utopia, an economic philosophy discussion." He pointed out that it took the European Union (EU) decades to adopt a single currency.
