According to the National Business Council (Conep), during the last meeting of the Economic and Social Council, a consultation body composed of all the economic actors, “the dam broke and everyone went home,” a nice way of saying that talks had broken down since they were going nowhere.
According to Jairon Severino, economics writer for Listin Diario, Conep had prepared a proposal for rationalizing government spending, the main weak point that the business community had identified and that needed to be controlled. The administration’s economic team apparently ignored the report and insisted on the proposal as presented.
The Conep report observed that despite the huge spending by the government, the country’s level of competitiveness did not improve in the least! The country is located in position 105 of the 144 countries monitored, on a par with Kenya, Bolivia, Ghana, Egypt and El Salvador.