Three economists are urging the government to change the focus of public spending. The economists criticized the 2015 budget for maintaining the same focus and spending as the 2014 budget and for not being aligned with the National Development Strategy law. Economists Isidoro Santana, Jorge Ulloa and Manuel Robles presented the findings of their analysis of the 2015 budget comparing it to the 2014 budget.
The law establishes that 2.8% of Gross Domestic Product should be allocated to public health, when the budget assigns only 2% of GDP to this sector. They also criticized the government for cutting spending on university programs by 0.6%, which means that the scholarship programs will be affected. They also commented that the government will be spending 46.5% on social programs, less than 46.8% of GDP in 2014. In addition, they criticized the government for choosing to increase the assignments to the decentralized institutions, which will receive RD$34.3 billion in transfers, or RD$4 billion more than in 2014. “That part of the spending is one of the least transparent and hardest to monitor,” said the economists.
They also commented on the high Dominican public debt that has been carried over and increased significantly since the Baninter banking collapse in 2003.