2003 – Page 69

The re-acquisition of the energy distribution companies EdeSur and EdeNorte will bring an end to power outages, said President Hipolito Mejia in an address to supporters of his re-election yesterday. “The service has improved since the government took over EdeNorte and EdeSur, and will improve because that is my commitment – I would not joke …

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El Caribe’s headline today says that businesses could see a 50% increase in the power bills. Edwin Croes, financial manager of EdeSur and EdeNorte, now renationalized by the government, said that if an alternate option is not found, industrial and commercial power rates will go up by 40-50%. Croes said these are the same sectors …

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In an interview with El Caribe, Apolinar Veloz, general manager of the Central Bank, said that the government was poorly advised by those who recommended establishing increased legal reserves to banks, subsidizing the power service, imposing a 5% tax on exports and buying back the shares of the power companies. Veloz said the government should …

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Writing in the Listin Diario, commentator Ana Mitila Lora says the conflicts mentioned by the international financial authorities are comparable to the dilemma faced by those Dominicans lucky enough to have some money to spare. In the same way the government is putting the country’s interests behind the President’s re-election ambitions, Dominicans are faced with …

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PLD pre-Presidential candidate Leonel Fernandez has said that the next government will have to be austere in its public expenditures, and proposes an economic model based on the private sector. Should he be put into power, he pledged, his administration would concentrate on lowering interest rates and increasing capital flow. These “anti-populist” measures, according to …

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The Chamber of Deputies has ratified the introduction of X-ray equipment at all ports of entry to the Dominican Republic, despite strenuous resistance by the business community and the recommendation of the justice committee that the idea be scrapped. The computerized X-ray system would be used to inspect all cargo leaving the country, ostensibly to …

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Reports in Diario Libre and El Caribe, citing an AP press wire, attribute to US State Department official Kelly Shannon saying that the confiscation of Executive Branch legal advisor Guido Gomez Mazara’s tourist visa was due to an alleged direct link or [one] through relatives to the drug trade and other illicit activities. The decision …

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High-ranking government officials in Caracas are saying that the only way the dispute between Venezuela and the Dominican Republic can be resolved is if the Dominican authorities clamp down on the alleged scheme being devised here against Venezuela’s President Chavez. Last month Venezuela suspended its oil exports to the DR and withdrew its ambassador, in …

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UNICEF’s Latin America and Caribbean regional director Nils Kastberg, who is in the Dominican Republic to make the rounds of UNICEF projects, said yesterday that the country’s maternal mortality rate was “exorbitant”. According to United Nations figures, 200 women of every 100,000 die during childbirth in the Dominican Republic. Kastberg said the high mortality rate …

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Writing in Hoy, columnist Donald Guerrero Martinez remarks that it took ten years, three governments, and the death of “the strongman of Navarrete”, Joaquin Balaguer, for novelist Viriato Sencion to be awarded the national literary prize he won in 1993. Sencion’s was named the winner ten years ago for his satirical novel on the Balaguer …

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