Santo Domingo.- President Leonel Fernandez Tuesday night said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave Dominican Republic a “breather” when it agreed to higher government spending for the rest of the year, but stated his concern over a recession.

The chief executive didn’t reveal however what amount the IMF authorized, without altering the objectives in the already signed Stand-By agreement. “We’ve managed to convince the Fund to give us a certain breather and it seems that our latest outcries have been heard and again has been a certain stimulus to spending in the Dominican Republic, and from now until December, I know that we’ll be alive and happier than in December last year, when spending was trimmed or reduced.”

“We have the agreement with the IMF. And we signed when it proposed the stimulus to spending, and in a first stage what the Government did was to generate spending to produce economic growth, but in the middle of last year they proposed the opposite, and in a period of six months it was necessary to cut 40 billion  pesos,” Fernandez said in the opening of the forum “Global changes and challenges to Dominican foreign policy,” in the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development, Funglode.

He said with that event he felt the inconformity of the people in the street, adding that the Government is already adopting the safeguards for next year and that the country can navigate out of the crisis situation. “But beyond Dominican Republic what I’m seeing is a problem that doesn’t seem clear to me and I would say that it’s concerning, because faced with the eventuality of a second recession and considering austerity policies, how’s a recession going to be left behind.”