Dominican economic growth is backed by the sustained massive debt taken by the PLD governments.
A report in El Dinero points out that while Dominican economy, as measured by real GDP has historically grown by an average of 5% in the past 70 years, as of 2008 local governments have taken on an unprecedented amount of debt. The non-financial public sector debt is now around US$24 billion for 37.9% of GDP in 2014, increasing for 2015.
The report in El Dinero adds that the public debt is now at the same level as the GDP for 2005. In the past 10 years, the public debt has grown by 11.7% on average.