El Caribe newspaper reports that 92 percent of Dominican consumers pay all their credit obligations on time, and 88 percent do not allow themselves to fall behind in payments at all. Studies carried out by Credit Information Center of the Americas (CICLA) and Consultores de Datos del Caribe (Data Credito), two local credit bureaus, show that only 8 percent of Dominican credit card users have problems paying their bills and only half of those cases have required legal proceedings. Porfirio de Jesus Lopez Nieto, president of Data Credito, says this is an indication that the Dominican financial sector is one of the healthiest in the world. He said that Dominicans take care not to appear on the blacklists of the credit bureaus.
Marcelino San Miguel II, president of CICLA, says that once a person is classified as a delinquent payer (when the account passes to the legal department), it takes seven years to clean up an individual?s record and again be subject to credit approval.