While there is optimism, there is also dissent and time is running out, but the government is confident that it will be able to place the necessary legislation before Congress. According to El Caribe, the government is trying to achieve a tax reform that will satisfy all economic sectors, but the differing proposals and the short timeframe are certainly obstacles in its way. According to Juan Hernandez, the head of the Department of Taxes (DGII), “the idea is to have a proposal ready by the first week in August.” It is also expected that the technical group that is working with the Social Dialogue will complete its report on the different sums of money to be generated by the different taxes. However, this technical group just started its work yesterday and began to quantify the impact that the elimination of taxes resulting from the DR-CAFTA will have on the local economy as well as the various proposals coming from the different sectors.
To complicate matters, there appear to be differing interpretations as to just what the obligations of the Social Dialogue are. Iraima Capriles said that he felt that the Social Dialogue was intended to “find a consensus,” but different representatives of the sectors present at the Dialogue said that the idea of the group was only to quantify DR-CAFTA’s impact and to arrange each sector’s requirements so that they can be adjusted at another level.