Economy Minister Isidoro Santana has said that the agenda of President Dailo Medina and the official government mission to China in November 2018 will include the discussing of financing of infrastructure projects in the Dominican Republic by Chinese government institutions. Santana, who was the first minister to visit China after relationships were established last May 2018 said that the two countries have been trading with each other for a long time, so he does not think there would be much change.
Economist Ernesto Selman, when interviewed by Noticias SIN, says that China will replace the Brazilian financing and construction scheme through Odebrecht that dried out after the company was charged with corruption in a New York City court. Administrative Minister Jose Ramon Peralta heads the new China office opened at the Presidency to centralize Chinese deals for the country.
Selman told Noticias SIN that China could fill the void for infrastructure projects that previously were financed by BNDES, the Brazilian export bank, with Odebrecht as the contractor. He explained the Dominican government would seek financing from the government of China in the same way it received this from Brazil.
He alerted that the Chinese companies bring their technology, equipment and even Chinese labor that could replace Dominican labor. Odebrecht engineers supervised the constructions, but these in great measure were subcontracted to local builders that used local labor.
Selman said in these days of trade war in the works between China and the United States, China would be interested in setting up a base in the Dominican Republic to get around paying taxes to export to the US by using the DR-CAFTA when exporting to the United States.
Selman says there will be no advantage for Dominican exports because the same tropical products the country could export are already sourced from Pacific Basin countries. Selman says the country could benefit from investments, though.
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Diario Libre
Noticias SIN
31 October 2018
