Last week the president of the Dominican Petroleum Refinery, Amaury Justo Duarte, said that the dispatch of fuel would be regularized – an event that has yet to happen.
In an editorial today, Hoy newspaper criticizes the fact that the government official’s statements do not correspond with reality, citing further examples of the paradox. For example, the government has stated that it does not owe the generators any money and that it has the cash to pay for fuel imports. Hoy newspaper today says that it looks very bad for our international credit if the DR must turn back much needed fuel imports due to lack of dollars to pay for them. The writer also was also dubious of the merit in placing such orders only to cancel them shortly before delivery, instead of prior to the ship departing port. The newspaper comments that while the government says it has the money needed to source the fuel and supply the company’s generation plants, the power grid continues in a state of dismal dysfunction. The editorialist speculates that in the latter case it is possible that the government is trying to buy time until it receives the IMF’s promised disbursements, but criticizes the fact that the government misleads the people by saying it has the money to pay the generators to eliminate the blackouts and for the fuel that is to be sold at the gas stations. “In both cases, the facts make those who: try to minimize the seriousness of the problems we are confronting look very bad.”