Writing in Diario Libre today, Friday 22 November, former Central Bank manager Pedro Silverio Alvarez points out that a very high percentage of the Dominican Republic’s labor force is employed in the public sector. He says that the government employs approximately 10% of the working population, compared to 2.5% in the seven members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Germany, Canada, France, Japan, United Kingdom, Australia and the United States.
Making another case for a reduction in government spending and institutional reform, he warns of the serious institutional problem that has been created by Congress passing laws that allocate percentages of the national budget. These goals are not met and the laws are merely indicative, he writes in Diario Libre. “There needs to be an institutional solution to the problem that has so many implications for the credibility of the public administration,” he writes. Recently 42 judges from the Judicial Branch presented a recourse to the Supreme Administrative Court to prevent President Medina from passing the National Budget without taking into account wage raises for them. There is a law that sets a percentage for the judiciary that is not being met.
“Public spending needs a thorough revision, meaning that this will open a process to public scrutiny that could have major political costs, but there is no alternative,” he writes. “Institutional advances are difficult precisely because of these political costs and the benefits that are generated by a duly organized chaos,” he writes. He states: “That is why, with unnecessary frequency, the easier road is followed, which is undoubtedly to take on more debt.”
Silverio writes that to take on the political costs of public policy decisions that improve our prospects for development is the obligation of a responsible political leader. He comments that many say “politics is the art of what is possible,” adding that a much more convincing definition would be “the art of making possible what is necessary.”
www.diariolibre.com/opinion/2013/11/22/i412015_rigidez-polatica-del-gasto-pablico.html