Santo Domingo.- A study of New York and New Jersey markets reveals that foreign companies are taking over Dominican product brands, taking advantage the country’s failure to supply then, Industry and Commerce minister Manuel Garcia affirmed Thursday.

He said the finding is based on an investigation by technicians of the Ministry’s Foreign Commerce Department  (DICOEX), funded by the Inter-American Development Bank on “nostalgic” products that the Dominican community in New York and New Jersey consumes.

The investigation graphically exposes, Garcia said, how foreign companies use our national flag to pass off their products as Dominican, since the national exports still don’t meet the demand from many of those ethnic market niches.

Garcia, speaking in a conference in Santiago, stressed the potential for the micro, small and median company (Mipyme) the New York and New Jersey ethnic markets with a population of more than half a million immigrants, aside from Spain, where more than 125,000 Dominicans already reside and some Caribbean islands that demand local products.

The study set out to determine which Dominican products are irreplaceable in the preference by Dominican residents in that area and obtain information on 20 nostalgic consumption items, which more than 50 percent of those polled said they demand as part of their traditional gastronomical and cooking habits.

The research by Claudia Troncoso and Elka Scheker proposes workshops and training for the Mipymes, producers of nostalgic products, and chose the mango variety banilejo (from the area of Bani), “leaf” cheese, garlic paste, oregano and typical sweets, among others, to find out which national exports don’t respond to the demand and in this manner, determine if they are production or marketing problems in the country, or a breach of United States sanitary requirements.