The Dominican Republic could be allotted 18.41% of the duty-free quota of 250 million square meters for knitted apparel assigned to CBI beneficiary countries as part of the expansion of the bill to go into effect in October, as per a news article in La Nación, the leading Costa Rican newspaper. The DR was alloted 46.025 million square meters of the quota of apparel to be made from US yarns, or cut and assembled knitted apparel from one or more CBI countries using US yarn. The quota was allotted during a 19 June meeting in Miami among CBI beneficiary countries. The discussions held in Miami were among the regional representatives of the Central American & Caribbean Textile and Apparel Council (CACTAC) who will eventually be submitting a proposal for the quota allocation to the CBI and U.S. governments for approval. Other large quota beneficiaries were: Honduras – 25.6% (64 million square meters) El Salvador – 21.4 % (53.5 million square meters) Guatemala – 20% (50 million square meters) Costa Rica – 7.59% (18.98 million square meters) The CBI quota allocation has a 16% annual growth rate allowance for the first three years. In addition there is a duty-free quota of 4.2 million dozen t-shirts.
