President Leonel Fernandez has commissioned the government’s economic team to study and evaluate a group of proposals together with the private sector and Congress, aimed at honing the productive system to the effects anticipated when the Dominican Republic – Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) with the US comes into effect. They are to quantify the cost of the proposed compensatory measures. The President had a meeting lasting more than three hours with representatives of the agribusiness and industrial sectors, legislators, union leaders and civil society organizations to discuss the agreement. The majority is in favor of its approval although objections were made to some aspects. Andres Bautista Garcia, president of the Senate, guaranteed that the treaty would be approved by Congress as fast as possible. The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Alfredo Pacheco, was also present at the meeting. Some of the proposals include scrapping the exchange commission and tariff for capital goods and raw materials that currently pay a tariff of 0 to 3 percent, the compensation of the property tax to real estate dedicated to production with the income tax paid at the end of the fiscal year, and the reduction of the cost of energy. Also proposed were the accelerated depreciation of capital goods in five years, the establishment of an expeditious and automatic procedure for the compensation of the VAT (ITBIS) paid in advance for exempted goods, and the elimination of the consular invoice.