Customs director Miguel Cocco, estimates that during the first year of the DR-CAFTA the Dominican government will have to go without between RD$24 and RD$26 billion it currently collects through tariffs and the exchange commission, as reported in Diario Libre. He explained that this motivated the government to make a tax readjustment taking into account that 82% of the tax income in the country is contributed by the poor whereas only 18% by the wealthy. Cocco believes the FTA will test the true competitiveness of national producers. That means that we cannot subsidize lack of competitiveness due to obsolete technology to sectors that have taken their resources out of the country and don’t want to bring them back, nor to shyness or lack of management, he stated. He said that the government has limited resources and that subsidies should favor the poor. He insisted that competitiveness can no longer be the excuse to tax the population, and expressed his disagreement with the proposed extension of the VAT (ITBIS).