The Director of Customs, Vicente Sanchez Baret, announced that a new schedule of customs duties would go into effect in order to conform the DR to standards imposed by the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), to which the DR is a signatory. Sanchez Baret said that the new tariffs would go into effect as soon as the economic package being proposed by the Mejia administration has been adopted. In 1994, the DR joined 124 other countries in signing the Treaty of Marrakech, which created the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, the country has been slow to adopt the fiscal, monetary and social service reforms required of treaty signatories. ?All the preparations are being made,? according to the Customs Director, ?to put the GATT valuations in effect.? In today?s edition of Hoy, a front page article speculates as to whether the hoped-for tariff reductions being proposed by Mejia and the GATT-induced increases might not cancel each other out, leaving prices for imported goods unchanged, but subject to the new 2% ITBI tax.
