Central Bank Governor Héctor Valdez Albizu reports that the Monthly Economic Activity Indicator (IMAE) for February 2021 shows year-on-year growth of 1.1%.
During a press conference, Valdez Albizu pointed out that this growth represents a remarkable recovery from the most critical point of the crisis in April 2020, when the IMAE declined 29.8%. These are the first growth numbers since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. The 1.1% compares to the -1.8% of January 2021.
The 1.1% also compares to the IMAE of 5.3% for pre-pandemic February 2020. The Central Bank expects business conditions to continue to improve.
Likewise, the governor informed that the weighted average index of all economic activities excluding hotels, bars and restaurants presented a positive variation of 3.3% in February 2021. The economy has responded favorably to monetary stimuli to reactivate production and household spending and the government’s extension of social programs to sustain Dominican consumer spending.
Valdez Albizu stated that the positive inter-annual growth of the economy shows once again the great resilience and strong fundamentals of the Dominican economy to successfully weather external and internal shocks, as evidenced in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. He added that the conditions are in place for the recovery process to continue to intensify in the coming months, projecting that the economy will show growth between 5.5% and 6.0% by the end of this year.
Valdez Albizu informed that recently one of the main risk rating firms, Moody’s, raised its growth projection for the country to 6.0%, mainly due to the higher than expected positive drag effect and the effective vaccination process, which will allow a faster recovery of the national economic activity.
He also noted that the World Bank updated its estimates for the region, placing the Dominican Republic with an increase of 5.5% in its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), above the regional average forecast of 4.4%.
The performance of the economic activities during February 2021 was: construction (10.3%), mining (8.1%), local manufacturing (6.5%), health (6.4%), commerce (4.1%), real estate activities (2.2%), agriculture (1.4%), communications (0.6%) and free trade zones (0.1%).
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31 March 2021