Dominican-born Carlos Asilis, a former US equity strategist at J.P. Morgan now with New York-based hedge fund Vega Asset Management, in a talk at the “Strategy for Sustainable Growth in the DR: Challenges” workshop organized by the National Association of Young Entrepreneurs (ANJE) spoke of all the catching up the Dominican Republic has to do in basic matters. He highlighted that since 1930 there has been a decline in education and health services offered by the government. He considered that the weak social infrastructure of the country should be assigned “priority A1” by the government. He explained that there is an enormous gap in the human development of the country, especially in education matters. He said that to close this gap, the country needs to step up its investment in social infrastructure to levels above the international average. He spoke about how the DR in regards to government social spending per capita is ranked in 152th place of 226 countries, below Nicaragua, El Salvador and Peru. Furthermore he said that in the number of children in school, the country is 99th place of 135 nations. Meanwhile, the country scores high in corruption, in 57th place amongst 139 countries.