The Ministry of Economy highlights that the public deficit will be significantly reduced this year. In a press release, the ministry highlights that as of 29 October there was already a fiscal surplus of RD$5.6 billion or 0.11% of the GDP. Conservative estimates place the year’s end deficit at -1% to -2%.
But the Ministry of Economy is hopeful a surplus will be recorded. The accumulated primary balance at 43 weeks of 2021 is RD$130 billion, higher than the amount of interest paid accumulated during the first 43 weeks of RD$125 billion.
Economy Minister Miguel Ceara Hatton says the recent data confirms the high Gross Domestic Product growth and stepped up pace of private investments. Ceara Hatton says the great challenge is improving public services for better distribution of real income to the population and improved quality of life after overcoming the pandemic crisis.
In the document titled “In 2021 we are getting out of the rut, the challenge is to reinforce the policies derived from the quality of life paradigm”, Ceara Hatton, specifies that as of September 2021, the accumulated growth was 12.7%. This is a 3.6% increase compared to pre-pandemic September 2019. He reaffirms the country is expected to end the year with an impressive 10% economic growth. GDP growth in October is rounding around 10%.
Ceara Hatton explains that as of June 2021, investment accounted for 65% of the growth and 95% of this investment is private. He also stated that between January and June 2021, private investment grew at a pace eight times greater than between 2014 and 2020.
He also pointed out that for three consecutive quarters (last quarter of 2020 and the first two quarters of 2021), the investment ratio (investment1/GDP) was above 30%.
The Ministry of Economy reports that over two million workers are employed and that the number has grown by 225,000 over the past 12 months. The report says that farming, industry, and services have reported the most significant increases in jobs. This recovery indicates that close to 97% of the pre-pandemic jobs that were lost between April and June 2020, have been recovered. In other positive news, commercial activity was up close to 20% year to year.
The Ministry of Economy points out that the number of employed workers has been increasing and as of October 2021, the number of formal workers employed exceeds the employment level of February 2020.
As of September 2021, according to the Central Bank’s Continuous National Labor Force Survey (ENCFT), only 10,000 formal and informal jobs are missing for the country to recover the total employment lost between February 2020 and September 2021.
The accumulated inflation as of September is 5.9%, the price increase between September 2020 and 2021 is 7.53%. Inflation basically reflects international circumstances such as the increase in raw materials, freight, oil, and coal.
“In other words, it is not a problem of the Dominican economy but an international situation,” says Ceara Hatton.
As for the productive sectors, he stressed that they have responded: the Hotels, Bars and Restaurants grew by 31.8% between January and September 2021, construction has grown by 30% for the same period, free zones by 24.2%, local manufacturing by 11.5%, trade by 11.1%, among others.
Foreign exchange earnings have increased above the 2019 level, although imports are also up.
International reserves have increased and the exchange rate has slightly revaluated, giving a sign of great stability.
Read more in Spanish:
El Caribe
Ministry of Economy
8 November 2021