Environmentalists are concerned the new highway will affect vulnerable mountain areas. The Dominican government is backing a public-private alliance that calls for the construction of the US$400 million road to shorten travel distance by about half an hour to Puerto Plata from Santiago. The 32.7 km project would enable the distance to be carried out in half an hour. But environmental groups such as Soeci and Fundetrop claim it would harm the ecosystems of the mountainous area, as reported in BnAmericas.
The project has the backing of industrial and business groups in Santiago.
According to documents provided by the government’s PPP agency DGAPP, the highway is an initiative of APP Quisqueya SRL, a local company specialized in PPP infrastructure projects, and was delivered to DGAPP in November 2020. The proposal received the green light for construction in April 2021.
The aim is to solve “the current deficiency of infrastructure between the provinces Santiago de los Caballeros and Puerto Plata,” say the documents, as the current highways linking the localities – Santiago-Navarrete-Puerto Plata and Gregorio Luperón, known as the Tourism Route – were built between five and eight decades ago and are deemed unsafe.
“Is essential to us that Dominican companies, who have proved their capabilities for this type of project, participate in the process which we can assure will be a PPP model that will erase previous bad experiences when we didn’t have Public-Private Alliance Law 47-20 – which guarantees the efficient risk distribution and adequate benefit distribution,” said the general director of DGAPP, Sigmund Freund, in a press conference in May 2023.
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DR1 News
7 June 2023