Sunday?s edition of El Caribe newspaper reported that telephone, cable and
electricity service will continue to pinch the family purse. According to the
paper, these services are now a privilege for some. The ?Gonzalez family? ? a
fictitious entity ? has two professional parents with three children, for
instance. They had to remove the ?0? and the ?1? from their telephone because
the bill had escalated to RD$4000 a month, and this, plus the RD$2,500 for
electricity, RD$500 for water and RD$800 for cable TV, was too much for the
family?s monthly income of RD$40,000. Both Verizon and Tricom telecommunication
firms agree that the 166% devaluation of the peso is the prime cause for the
increase in the costs of their services. Besides the regular cost of service,
there is the 2% tax and the 12% VAT which are added on to the bill. A letter
sent by Benigno Gonz?lez to the Verizon clients announced a 35% price increase
along with an 18? per-minute increase in the price of local calls, and national
long distance calls were increased by 15? a minute, going up to RD$3.10 a
minute. Tricom raised their prices by 21%. Cable TV was not far behind, as they
announced price increases that varied from 43% to 56%, according to Telecable
and Aster. Electricity, of course, is a different story. The electricity
distributors have been serving up price increases of between 4% and 8% for
months now. George Reinoso, the Superintendent of Electricity, told reporters
that there is nothing to be done about this since the IMF Stand-By Agreement
requires a 48% adjustment in the price of electricity, and oil is reaching near
historic prices of US$40 dollars a barrel.