2004 – Page 69

President Leonel Fernandez yesterday guaranteed that the Free Trade Agreement with the United States would go through. As he spoke at the opening of the EXPO Cibao 2004 in La Barranquita, Santiago, the President told his audience of diplomats, politicians, and industrial and commercial leaders that no single sector of the nation’s economy has the …

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Manuel Garcia Arevalo, the spokesman for the bottlers of Pepsi in the Dominican Republic, told Hoy newspaper that local producers could circumvent any surcharge on corn syrup imports by producing in the border area provinces, under the lucrative provisions of Law 28-01. He explained that any company wishing to use tax-free sugar need merely install …

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The Central Bank of the Dominican Republic (CB) has announced an ambitious plan to reduce the quasi-fiscal deficit that was produced by extremely high interest rates and bank bail-outs in 2003. The aim of the new programs will be to reduce the deficit by RD$16.3 billion in 2005 by applying the first of four steps …

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A team of government officials, including the finance minister and Central Bank governor, will travel to Europe this weekend in search of funding that will allow the country to meet some of its payment obligations. While there, the officials will also meet with the Paris Club and lay out the plans to comprise the new …

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The new changes in the tax code go into effect tomorrow. Law 288-04 calls for a 4% increase in the VAT and higher alcohol and cigarette taxes. Publicity will be taxed at a 6% rate until December of this year and in 2005 the accounts will be taxed at a 10% rate. Your phone bills …

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Former governor of the Central Bank Guillermo Caram of the PRSC opposition party writes today in El Caribe of the inertia that seems to have taken hold of the Fernandez government. He expresses particular concern for the government’s questionable ability to modify the most criticized aspects of the Mejia government. Caram points out that the …

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Prosecutors in the National District and elsewhere in the province of Santo Domingo told reporters from Diario Libre that the new Code of Penal Procedures was being implemented without any problems within the jurisdiction. Jose Manuel Hernandez Peguero and Perfecto Acosta said they were working together with police investigators and examining magistrates in using the …

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The National Housing Institute (INVI) was rocked yesterday by a scandal that involves its own staffers, as well as an Armed Forces captain. According to Felipe Abreu Roedan, the director of the INVI, a group of people working in the legal office of the institute allegedly falsified documents that permitted them to sell public housing …

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The former chief of the National Police, retired Major General Jaime Marte Martinez, was visibly upset when reporters asked him about the 15 vehicles that were supposedly recovered from thieves and found to have been in his possession at one time or another. “I have not taken a tricycle, much less a vehicle,” said Marte …

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At least nine shots were fired at a vehicle belonging to commentator and television journalist Euri Cabral as he drove along Carmen Mendoza de Cornielle Street last night. Three of the shots hit the front windshield but missed Cabral, the driver, and his passenger friends. Another three shots went through the rear windshield and exited …

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