Emilio Fernández-Corugedo, mission chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the Dominican Republic, highlights that the Dominican economy has been the most dynamic and resilient in Latin America in the last two decades. The IMF mission is in the Dominican Republic to review the Dominican economy.
Fernandez-Corugedo acknowledges a combination of good monetary policy implementation, a robust financial system and solid macroeconomic fundamentals are behind the outstanding economic performance.
An IMF mission is in the Dominican Republic for the regular series of meetings with various Dominican institutions as part of Article IV of the IMF Agreement. The article grants the IMF a mandate to exercise surveillance over the economic, financial and exchange rate policies of its members to ensure the effective operation of the international monetary system.
At the opening of the round of meetings, Fernández-Corugedo spoke of how the current international scenario with external shocks is very complex that in general causes a slowdown in global economic activity.
However, he explained that the Dominican economy continues to show a positive outlook, being proactive in regulating and supervising the financial system and exhibiting a good business climate.
The governor of the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic (BCRD), Héctor Valdez Albizu, received the mission from the IMF in his office. The mission is taking stock of the performance of the Dominican economy during 2022 and the outlook for the current year.
During the meeting, Governor Valdez Albizu informed the mission that the Dominican economy maintained a good dynamism in 2022, growing 4.9%, driven by the strength of domestic demand and foreign exchange-generating activities, especially tourism. He added that “preliminary results for the first quarter of 2023 show that the monthly economic activity indicator (IMAE) had an average inter-annual expansion of 1.4 %, consistent with the variation of 0.4 % in January, 1.8% in February and 2.1% in March 2023.
This performance in the first three months of the year 2023 is seen to be in line with expectations and reflects the moderation of domestic demand and the deterioration of the international environment in a context of greater uncertainty,” Valdez Albizu explained to the mission.
Concerning the labor market, Valdez Albizu stated that pre-pandemic employment levels have been surpassed, reaching an all-time high of 4.8 million employed. The open unemployment rate was reduced, going from 8.0% in the first quarter of 2021 to 4.8% at the end of 2022, that is, by 3.2 percentage points.
Regarding tourism, the BCRD governor highlighted that the activity contributed the most to the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2022. The tourism sector posted an increase of 24.0% in its real aggregate value.
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El Caribe
IMF
WTO
10 May 2023