Alberto Leroux, the president of the Consejo Nacional del Comercio en Provisiones, and Julian Antonio Parra, the president of the Asociacion Nacional de Comerciantes Mayoristas de los Mercados, two merchant organizations, object to cattleranchers being handed the ownership of Parmalat Dominicana. They explain how the company benefited in 1994, when the Dominican government, represented by INESPRE, signed an agreement with the dairy producers, whereby they were given a lease on a milk processing plant that had been donated by Sweden to produce milk for school breakfast programs at a low cost. The dairy producers accepted the lease of the land and buildings for a paltry RD$100 a year. Leroux and Parra explained that shortly after, these properties were passed on to Parmalat International, which quickly reduced the share participation of the local dairy industrialists. With the property now worth an estimated RD$500 million, Leroux and Parra reminded that Parmalat International collapsed in Italy and the rest of the world where it had subsidiaries. In the DR, the dairy producers have announced that the Italians would sell their shares to dairy producers backed by Venezuelan investors.
Leroux and Parra feel the government should retake the plant to produce the milk for the school breakfast program, as originally intended. They propose that the government establish effective controls so that the alimentary program may operate without intermediaries, as reported in Hoy newspaper. In their opinion, no one should sell to a third party what is not one’s own property to begin with, and they stressed the fact that the dairy farmers have the right to a lease only ? not ownership of the plant.