President Luis Abinader said in Andorra when participating in pre-Iberoamerican Summit events, that the great challenge facing countries is to avoid a financial crisis once the Covid-19 pandemic is over.
“One issue that we must address at this summit, and later with all countries, is that from this pandemic crisis, we cannot move on to a financial crisis, a financial crisis that can socially destabilize many of our countries,” he remarked.
The Dominican President spoke at the 13th Ibero-American Business Meeting, held in Andorra, before the inauguration of the 27th Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government on 21 April 2021.
He remarked vaccines could put the health crisis behind us. “And then we need to prepare ourselves to face the financial crisis caused by an increase in public debt, which can lead to situations where an increase in taxes may lead to less consumer spending and social problems,” he warned.
He maintained that it is necessary to have a pro-growth economic vision, which also allows for a greater amount of taxes and to achieve creative financial schemes that allow to comply with the payment of debts, but without penalizing the capacity for growth and job creation.
“I believe that what we have to do is to analyze what we did wrong and how we can work better,” said the head of state.
Abinader remarked that the COVAX program, the vaccine distribution mechanism of the World Health Organization, has been a failure. “Since December we requested that they allow us to reach agreements with the owners of the vaccine patents, so that we could produce vaccines in the different laboratories, even consolidating several countries, but that was not achieved.”
“We understand that each country wants to vaccinate its people first, but I think we lacked the creativity to achieve the objectives of all the countries,” Abinader said.
The Dominican president explained in his speech that the country has been recovering. He cited that the latest Johns Hopkins report places the Dominican nation among the countries with the least lethality in Latin America.
He also referred to the economic aspect, noting that although tourism, one of the country’s primary sources of foreign exchange, was deeply affected by the pandemic, other sectors have reacted positively.
He pointed out the case of exports, which in February reported record figures.
“We are in the process of recovering tourism, we have some 300 thousand tourists, mainly from North America, estimated to arrive in April,” he said at the meeting.
He added that the country has already opened more than 50% of its hotel capacity. “I believe that we are going to have an important economic recovery”, he pointed out.
Regarding the forecasts made by credit organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund and ECLAC, he said that these point to a growth of 6% for 2021 in the Dominican Republic. He said the government forecast is that poverty will only increase by 1.9% in 2021.”Our objective is, in one year, to try to recover the level we had before the pandemic,” he said.
Other heads of government that attended in person were: Pedro Sánchez, Spain; Alejandro Giammattei, Guatemala; Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Portugal; Xavier Espot Zamora, Andorra; and Antonio Costa, Portugal. King Felipe VI gave the closing speech.
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Presidency
20 April 2021