SANTO DOMINGO.- The National Business Council (CONEP) said the fall in confidence and expectations in the nation’s productive sectors is the result of the United States economic situation’s influence on the country, the sustained rise in the price of oil, and the proximity of the general elections, which keeps the country in a permanent electoral campaign.

Conep president Lisandro Macarrulla said that the uncertainty produced by the ambivalence of a possible renewal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) adds to the fall in confidence.

He said the deficit in the payments of current account must be compensated with capital investments originating in the national productive sectors and by foreign investors, as is the key for the nation to recover those levels of confidence and expectations which have been lost. "In Conep we feel that in view of what this study by ANJE stated, which serves as an evaluator measure on the economy and the expectations on the country’s situation, it’s necessary for the authorities to take the pertinent measures so that in this new year 2008 we the economic agents receive clear signals that it works in an effort to bolster the indices of confidence and expectations of the Dominican enterprise sector."

The business leader spoke about the business opinion survey, recently published the National Young Industrialists Association (ANJE). If found that the confidence index, together with expectations on the business sector’s future, fell 10.7 percent compared with previous periods.