2001 – Page 7

El Siglo newspaper says that Presidents Hipolito Mejía and Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti will meet during the first week of December. The summit will be preceded by a meeting of border town mayors and a meeting between foreign ministers Hugo Tolentino Dipp and Philippe Antonio Joseph.

The Superintendent of Electricity Jose Ovalles has justified the long blackouts that continue to affect Dominicans by saying the distributor companies have not resolved their cashflow problems. He said the blackouts affect primarily the barrios where most of the residents do not pay for the service. This practice had been outlawed by the government. According …

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El Siglo newspaper explains today the reasons behind the shuffling of key Mejía administration officers. The newspaper says the transfers of Rafael Suberví Bonilla (former Minister of Interior & Police to Minister of Tourism), Pedro Franco Badía (from Administrative Secretary of the Presidency to Minister of Interior and Police) and Ramon Alfredo Bordas (from Minister …

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El Caribe’s editorial today urges the government to learn from its mistakes. El Caribe says that this year the government estimated current expenditures would account for 67% of the total budget. So far, they make up 75%, primarily due to the increase in public employees from 329,383 in 2000 to 352,753 as of June this …

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El Siglo, the first color Dominican newspaper, will no longer publish after 12 years in print. Its last edition came out today. The newspaper first appeared on 3 April 1989. It is owned by the same financial holding company that last year purchased the Listín Diario, the newspaper with the largest paid circulation in the …

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Chichi Peralta won a Latin Grammy Award yesterday for Best Merengue Album. His second CD, De Vuelta al Barrio, followed up on his very successful first CD, Pa’ Otro La’o (Caïmán Records America Inc.) For his biography, see http://www.worldmusicportal.com/Artists/Dominican/chichi_peralta.htm#Biography or the record company’s page at http://www.caiman.com/chichiperalta/index.shtml Three Dominican performers were nominated in the Second Latin …

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The Listín Diario newspaper explains the government’s dilemma regarding the 2002 National Budget. Sectors within the government want to establish a RD$70 billion budget, an increase of RD$5 billion over this year’s budget. Originally the government had said the budget would be RD$65 billion, the same as in 2001 to take into account the fact …

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The Dominican Republic has asked the World Trade Organization to allow free zone industries to maintain tax exemptions until the year 2018, instead of until 2005 as established in one of the draft proposals to be presented at the 9-13 November WTO meeting in Qatar. Originally, free zone exemptions would have ended on 31 December …

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The president of the Central Electoral Board (JCE) Manuel Ramon Morel Cerda said yesterday that there is no time to include the election of members of the Constitutional Assembly in the May 2002 election. Those members would be in charge of modifying the constitution. Morel Cerda says the 2002 election is complicated enough with the …

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Economists Jaime Aristy Escuder and Andres Dauhajre feel the administrator of the CDE César Sanchez and the Electricity Superintendent Jose Ovalles are to blame for high power rates consumers pay in the DR. Aristy accuses them of favoring the interests of the power companies over those of consumers. He criticized the Madrid Agreement signed on …

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