The Central Bank of the Dominican Republic (BCRD) reports that preliminary figures for the first half of 2024 show that foreign direct investment (FDI) reached US$2,374.3 million, increasing 0.9% compared to the same period of the previous year.
These flows demonstrate the confidence of foreign investors in the Dominican Republic as a destination for their investments, a country that since 2022 is the second largest recipient of FDI in the region, behind Mexico, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). This result is in line with year-end projections that FDI will exceed US$4.5 billion.
The sectoral distribution shows that more than half of FDI inflows were directed to the
tourism and energy sectors. It is important to highlight the evolution that the sector has had
energy sector, which increased its share of FDI from 7.5% in the first half of 2019.
2019 to 25.5% in the first six months of 2024, mainly due to state incentives
Dominican directed towards renewable energies.
Another relevant sector for FDI has been real estate, whose development is linked to the country’s tourism development, especially after recovering from the COVID19 pandemic.
The institution points out that in addition to the increase in FDI flows (0.9%) and remittances (4.4%),
Likewise, the Dominican economy achieved total exports of 1.8 million pesos in the first half of 2024.
more than US$6.8 billion, increasing by 2.3% over the same period in 2023.
Among exports, there is a 10% increase in gold exports, driven by improvements in production and by the historic price levels recorded by the precious mineral in
international markets. Of the total exports, those from free zones amounted to nearly US$4.2 billion, increasing by 6.6% year-on-year, which predicts that the sector will close the year with record export figures.
Likewise, the BCRD highlights that tourism revenues between January and June amounted to about
US$5.7 billion, about US$700 million (14.1%) above revenues for the same period
of 2023. This result was mainly due to the increase in tourist arrivals during the
first half of the year, which reached 5.3 million visitors by air and
cruise passengers.
It is worth noting that foreign exchange earnings from FDI, remittances, tourism, exports of goods and other services totaled approximately US$21.9 billion in January-June 2024, which implies an increase of US$1.327 billion compared to the same period in 2023, which contributes to the relative stability of the exchange rate.
Everything indicates that at the end of the year the country would receive foreign currency income of about
US$43 billion.
The Central Bank reaffirms its commitment to monitoring the current economic environment to
continue taking the necessary measures to counteract the impact on the Dominican economy of the challenging international panorama, in order to guarantee the stability of prices and the exchange market.
