Expo USA opened yesterday at the Dominican Fiesta Hotel convention center. Sixty-two firms, including new-to-market companies, firms already established in the DR and Dominican firms representing services and US products are exhibiting. This year a new Great American Food Pavilion will be showcasing produce of 20 food-related companies. During the inaugural, Charles Manatt, ambassador of the US, highlighted the importance of the DR as a trading and investment partner for the US. "The DR is the dominant economy in the Caribbean region, a strong and growing economy now growing at 11%/year, an economy with proven resiliency. The Dominican Republic is an economy that U.S. firms simply cannot afford to overlook," he highlighted while opening the trade show. Manatt said that statistics show that the DR is the seventh largest market in the Western Hemisphere for the United States and a larger market for the US than Chile, India, or Russia. "Trade between the United States and the Dominican Republic exceeded US$8.4 billion in 1999 and is on track to exceed that this year," he pointed out, advocating increasing bilateral trade.
