The Dominican government will save 24.2% of the resources that it had planned to spend on subsidies for the electricity sector in 2006. Of the US$700 million programmed for 2006, the government will only pay out US$530 million. Listin Diario cited two contributory factors to this unexpected largesse: the first one was the increased efficiency in electricity bill payment collection rates. The second was the fact that the government did not lower electricity rates by 2.4% and 3.7% as promised.