The Dominican Republic is a country that can barely guarantee breakfast snacks at public schools, while on the other end of the scale it is a world leader in the number of luxury SUVs per square kilometer, economist Isidoro Santana said during the launch of the new Dominican Academy of Sciences economic magazine under the academy presidency of Milciades Mejia.
The Academy of Sciences invited leading Dominican economists to give presentations at the launch of the Revista Dominicana de Economia, as reported in Hoy. During the event, Mejia thanked economist and former Central Bank governor Carlos Despradel for his key contributions.
At the event, Santana criticized the inequalities and contradictions in the Dominican economy. He mentioned the deficit in current account of Balance of Payment, the lack of international reserves and the low propensity in savings, when the Central Bank has consistently reported that the Dominican Republic is one of the economies to exhibit the highest growth rates in the region.
Economist Miguel Ceara Hatton said that contributing factors to the rising growth numbers have included the replacement of the import substitution model with services and free zone production, the encouragement of Dominicans to migrate abroad to reduce social demands and increase remittances, which has had a high social cost, and the high incidence of Haitian labor that has segmented the work market but maintained high earnings.
Economist Jose Luis de Ramon said that the most serious problems affecting the economy are institutional weakness, low productivity, high levels of inequality and the high levels of violence.
Economist Pavel Isa Conde said that being a small country has led to specialization that in turn has created high instability with a negative impact on private investment.
Fernando Manuel Pellerano, coordinator of the magazine, warned that the problem is in the structural deficiency of the capitalist economy that has an unemployment rate of 18%. He said that this could not be overcome, if capacities are not developed to guarantee formal jobs.
http://hoy.com.do/economia/2013/4/18/476470/Panel-de-economistas-pone-en-dudas-cifras-crecimiento-RD-de-ultimos-anos