According to the comments made by the head of the Dominican Federation of Retailers (FDC) Ivan de Jesus Garcia, the coming months of October and November will be the hardest for the small and medium sized retailer or business. In his comments at the Economic Meeting at Hoy, Garcia said that most of the smaller businesses have not absorbed the full impact of the financial crisis generated by the Baninter collapse and the efforts of the Central Bank to restore confidence in the local economy. According to Miguel Sang Ben the executive director of the FDC, most merchants do not collapse overnight, but, rather, take up to six months to realize that their business is going under. Because of the currency devaluation and the lack of purchasing power in the peso, many businesses are seeing a 50% reduction in sales and have been forced to reduce personnel to the bare minimum. According to Sang Ben, many of the medium and small businesses have been reduced to a subsistence level of family business.