2005 – Page 181

Adriano Miguel Tejada, the executive editor of Diario Libre, writes today in his second page editorial that Haiti and Haitians are touchy subjects for the Dominican national conscience. Tejada, a political scientist and lawyer, says that before it was easy: Dominicans hated Haitians, from whom the nation had become independent and “we used Haitians to …

Read more…

A negotiating team of economists will travel to Washington, D.C. next week to present the International Monetary Fund with a readjusted Letter of Intention. Specifically, the idea is to establish a deadline for the final dismantling of the subsidy on propane gas, according to Banks Superintendent Rafael Camilo. As carried in Hoy, Camilo told a …

Read more…

President George W. Bush called the approval of the DR-CAFTA agreement a top priority and said that the US Congress should also make it an important priority. Bush set his priorities at a meeting at the White House that welcomed Rob Portman as the new US Trade Representative of the United States, replacing Robert Zoellick. …

Read more…

The World Bank has set out to establish the fact that it is the Dominican private sector, the theoretical prime leader for making local agriculture more competitive that will most benefit from the effects of the DR-CAFTA. In a recent report titled “The Implications of the FTA with the USA Regarding Agriculture”, the WB warned …

Read more…

The DR-CAFTA agreement will require cheaper processes of production and marketing as well as lowering other costs that are twice what the country’s leading competitors are paying, if the current level of exports to the United States are to be maintained. Flying in the face of recent studies by the Word Bank, other studies carried …

Read more…

According to the report from the Pathology Lab, the woman who died in a lonely cell in the basement of the Las Americas International Airport last Friday was carrying 40 small bags of cocaine in her stomach and three of the bags burst, causing her death. As reported in all of today’s papers, the Attorney …

Read more…

The rains are continuing as a low pressure wave sweeps over the Dominican Republic. The National Emergency Commission (COE) reports a farmer was killed in a landslide on the roadway that goes from Jarabacoa to Manabao. Feliz Antonio Abreu was walking along the road when the mountainside collapsed killing him. Other reports cite 22 communities …

Read more…

Vice President Rafael Alburquerque announced the start of the Solidaridad welfare program. As part of the program, 400,000 electronic debit cards will be distributed to pre-selected persons. They authorize the cardholders to use RD$550 a month to purchase food and propane gas at subsidized prices. Beneficiaries participate in the Comer es Primero (Eating is First) …

Read more…

Ernesto Vilalta, speaking for the Association of Industries of Herrera (AEIH), one of the largest business groups in the DR, urged the government to give priority to measures that reduce the cost of power in the DR. Finance Minister Vicente Bengoa and other government department heads have been meeting with business representatives to reach agreements …

Read more…

The Economist Intelligence Unit, in an economic overview on the Dominican Republic following the successful restructuring of the sovereign bonds, says that the bottom line is that the risk of a liquidity crisis has been reduced and the way is clear for the government to normalize relations with other private external creditors and to seek …

Read more…