2006 – Page 71

Last night President Leonel Fernandez urged the private sector to make the efforts required to put the national social security system into operation. The President talked about “concessions” and “efforts” in his plea. At least, this is what VP Rafael Alburquerque told reporters after the meeting with the president of the National Private Business Council …

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President Leonel Fernandez handed over the titles to 214 plots of land yesterday, as part of the agrarian reform. The plots are equivalent to 5,425 acres of land for a value of RD$84 million, according to Hoy newspaper. Some of the titles were given on a temporary basis and other on a definite basis. Later …

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Next Sunday the latest mission from the International Monetary Fund will arrive in Santo Domingo to conduct the fifth revision and review of the Stand-by agreement. According to information given to Hoy newspaper, the gathering of fiscal statistics has posed the largest set of problems for the Central Bank and IMF officials. According to other …

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Renegotiations to the energy contracts will be the topics discussed during a meeting today with the Commission for Renegotiations of Contracts with the Private Energy Providers, as the government and the private sector look to end the country’s energy crisis. Reforms to the Madrid Agreement and the contracts with the energy companies Cogentrix and Smith& …

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The United Nations General Assembly has postponed voting for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for 24 hours. After yesterday’s voting there was no clear winner between competing nations Guatemala and Venezuela. To be selected, a country needs to have a two-thirds majority vote, and if a unanimous vote isn’t reached, a third …

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Former President Hipolito Mejia says that if his party’s convention were to be held today, he would cast his vote for Miguel Vargas Maldonado, who served as minister of public works during his administration. Commenting on the current debate over just what to change in the Constitution, Mejia said that he was reminded of the …

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Banking Superintendent Rafael Camilo has revealed that members of the financial community are trying to find ways to increase the loan limit to small businesses to a ceiling of RD$10 million. In a press release, Camilo says that such loans would be granted based entirely on the business’s credit history. Currently, only small and micro-businesses …

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In just the first nine months of 2006, government investigators estimate that the sale of false birth certificates, as well as other documents, netted about RD$500 million. The documents were sold to Haitians, drug traffickers, international criminals, baseball players and Cuban citizens. Researchers have established, according to Diario Libre, that the most common cases were …

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Minister for the Interior and the Police, Franklin Almeyda, has told reporters that the next session of the Superior Police Council (SPC) would be examining the status of thousands of criminal rap sheets in the Dominican Republic and clean them out. He said that the SPC would separate those that were on the police blotter …

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The Chamber of Deputies has rejected an aerial transport agreement between the DR and the United States because they considered it detrimental to the country’s interests. The agreement stated that airlines could make international flights, fly over the country’s airspace without landing, and not make layover stops. 112 deputies voted against the legislation, which had …

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