Dominican entrepreneurs call for fiscal reform

The Dominican Republic’s National Council of Private Enterprise (CONEP) agreed to give authorities a “friendly contribution” in return for an all-out fiscal reform.

The proposal calls for the approval of a tax reform bill in the first half of December that will come to strike down part-time agreements in this sector. The new reform should be implemented as early as January 2004.

Dominican authorities had asked the private sector for a commitment to fork over a 5 percent tax levied on exports, a move that the country’s Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional because it solely sought to clinch loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

On Oct. 26, President Hipolito Mejia trumpeted a done deal between the Tourism Department and the country’s Free Trade Zones with the hope of working out a squabble with the IMF that’s now barring a $1 billion loan from being funneled into the Dominican Republic’s cash-strapped economy.

The government expects to rake in as many as $50 million a month worth of tax money from exporters, plus $125 million from the Free Trade Zones and $150 million from the local tourist sector.