New York.- President Leonel Fernandez affirmed yesterday that despite the Dominican economy’s growth rates in the last few years, his nation has few probabilities of reducing poverty by 50 percent in the next five years.

The chief executive, speaking before the United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals, attributed the difficulty to meet its objective to unexpected, internal and external circumstances, and in first place cited the 2003 internal financial crisis, in which three major banks failed. “As a result of that crisis the economy decreased -0.3%; the currency devaluated more than 100%; inflation burst in a concerning manner and the unemployment rate went from 13% to 19%."

He said in that context, poverty, instead of falling, increased, and that it wasn’t until 2005 when the national economy again began to revive and the social indices also began to improve.

Fernandez affirmed that since the beginning of the 90s, or the reference date that has been applied to establish the Millennium Development Goals assumed by 189 countries in 2000, the Dominican population jumped 35%, from 7.2 million in 1990, to the current 9.7 million. "The gross domestic product rose approximately by 123 billion pesos -that is to say, 22 billion dollars- to 342 billion pesos, equal to 50 billion dollars."

Another factor that conspired against the Goals, according to Fernandez, was the global financial and economic crisis unleashed at the end of 2007, still latent, as a result of the slow and still fragile growth of the world’s economy. "In short, ladies and gentlemen, as can be observed, there hasn’t been a lack of political will, as planning or responsibility has lacked either, what will determine that the Dominican Republic cannot obtain some Goals of the Millennium as had been anticipated for 2015."