Tourism businessman Frank Rainieri of the Punta Cana Group has been very vocal in advocating that the fiscal reform set to go before Congress should serve as a tool for fostering national development. In an interview with Cesar Medina on Channel 9, Rainieri said that what has been drawn up so far is merely a way of compensating the government for revenue lost with the advent of the free trade agreement signed with the United States. “What we are doing is compensating, and this is not a road to development, we will have to continue doing the same thing every day,” he told the newspaper. “We have to see the tools that we need in order to compete and to carry out sustainable development, and if tourism is one of those sectors, as has been demonstrated over the last 15 years, then it has to be supported,” he stated. Asonahores seeks that tourism businesses in the DR are given equal treatment to that received by their regional competitors. Rainieri emphasizes that if the authorities were to support the industry, with investments in infrastructure and promotion, there could be six million instead of three million arrivals. The interview was transmitted on the Hoy TV program produced by Cesar Medina on Channel 9. He commented that the DR has lost out on 7,000 rooms that would have been built here and were instead built in Jamaica and Mexico because they enjoyed better conditions. “In Cancun the authorities award all sorts of facilities, there are no blackouts, garbage is picked up, there are totally lighted tourism corridors,” he said. He explained that the tourism sector left the umbrella of the National Council of Businesses that was negotiating the fiscal reform with the government because of differences of criteria. “Our position is that there is still time to carry out a fiscal reform that backs national development, and the tourism sector has to be seen as a sector that needs to compete in the best of conditions,” he stated.