Santo Domingo.- The business leaders grouped in the Conep want the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) extended, but ask it to make its position more flexible and reach a consensus, noting that despite the current external context the country has shown it can make efforts to comply with any pact.

“I believe the Monetary Fund must understand the Dominican reality and look within a world, where countries with deficits of much greater importance than Dominican Republic’s, have a country that’s prepared to work, that it has signaled that it has complied with its agreements with the IMF. They must both seek a consensus that allows having a follow-up with that stability which we have,” said Conep president Manuel Diez Cabral.

Speaking during the Christmas luncheon for the press in the restaurant Taboo Bamboo, the business leader said those commitments must fulfilled, and that “everything which leads to a happy ending is good for Dominican Republic.”

He also sees a country with a change in its debt policy and change towards the economic model in 2012, to turn the country into a major exporter.

Diez said business’s first proposal was to extend the agreement with the IMF to make certain parameters more flexible and avert the tax reform passed by Congress, adding that that a new agreement with the IMF must necessarily be precautionary.

Price pressures

The Conep president said external pressures made this year very difficult, with higher commodities prices which also pushing the cost of fuels. “Thank God we didn’t enter into an internal crisis of greater magnitude, and I believe that’s one of Dominican Republic’s great achievements.”