SANTO DOMINGO.- The modification proposal made yesterday by the country’s industrialists to the project that seeks a zero rate for 67 products of the daily diet, what it seeks is a distribution of quotas among “the big ones”, and does not benefit the national producers, affirmed today the spokesman for the People’s Force, Rubén Maldonado.
He said that the implementation of the elimination of tariffs will not cause a reduction in essential products, and that this is a reality that was admitted by the Minister of Industry and Commerce, Víctor (Ito) Bisonó.
“From our point of view, this does not change anything at all, this proposal, which has obviously been achieved with some of the government sectors, does not benefit the national productive sector at all,” he declared.
In its proposal delivered yesterday to Alfredo Pacheco, president of the Chamber of Deputies, the Association of Industrialists of the Dominican Republic (AIRD), asks to vary the validity of the provisional period, they request to establish that imports be through the National Agricultural Commission, that the Commission for Agricultural Imports has the power to limit the limit of the products that enter the country, determine the administration mechanisms for each case, and that for the products of the technical rectification, the commission establishes the prior import quota.
Maldonado argued that national producers will be the most affected by the elimination of the zero rate for 67 essential products.
He said that when the project is presented today in the Chamber of Deputies they will vote against it, which was the position that the leadership of the People’s Force.
He reported that they seek to approve a zero rate to bring chickens from Brazil and thereby benefit certain business sectors.
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“What I see there is a distribution of quotas, import quotas are distributed and that does not solve the problem for small producers in the Dominican Republic, because a small chicken producer, or a small rancher, or an agricultural producer small will be able to participate, that is for the big ones, so here what we are doing is distributing quotas”, he expressed.
He added: “If the Government really and effectively wants to help agricultural producers, former President Leonel Fernández already told him how to do it.
