Santo Domingo.-The president of the People’s Force (FP) party and former ruler Leonel Fernandezlaunched this Friday harsh criticism of the Government, assuring that food security in the Dominican Republic is not guaranteed with the policies that are being adopted by the executive branch.
For these affirmations, Fernández relied on data from studies carried out by agencies of the same government administration.
Fernández said that the sectors of the economy that have begun to be reactivated are those that are related to the external sector, such as remittances, free zones and tourism, mainly from North Americans.
“It is striking that there is a stagnation with regard to our internal factors, and there is a stagnation in an element that is essential for the maintenance of Dominican society, which is food production,” Fernández said.
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Very worried, the president of the FP explained that, “Even with the statistical rebound of 12.3, the agricultural sector, according to the BC, grew 2.6, and that is alarming, since the agricultural sector is food production, it is with what the Dominican society is going to sustain, and if even bouncing it is 2.6, it turned out that it was much lower and in the first quarter of this year it is 2.4, so that food production, food security, is not guaranteed with the policy of the current government, which has achieved the reactivation of the economy not by its own effort, but by what comes to us from the outside, and when that changes, then we would have serious difficulties here.
“In a government of the FP, the priority will always be the food security of the Dominican people, because for us it is clear and we always said it in our government efforts, that eating comes first, and for the Dominican Republic that continues to be the priority, eating It’s first,” he declared.
The former vice president warned of the gloomy and uncertain outlook that looms for the next two years. He said that now we have the rise in prices and to stop this rise, the governments will take measures to reduce money in circulation.
“The United States has been raising the interest rate, the purpose is for less money to circulate, if less money circulates, what is going to happen, that the economy is going to stagnate in growth and unemployment is going to rise, when the Dominican economy and unemployment rises, there will be less consumption, there will be fewer people buying, therefore there will be fewer remittances, there will be fewer tourists and there will be fewer free zones; that is the result that we are going to see as a consequence of reversing the policy of expansion towards a policy of monetary restriction”, he pointed out.
Fernández explained that as a consequence of the global confinement as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, the world economy was paralyzed, forcing governments to take measures to expand spending and monetary circulation.
“In the year 2021 everywhere the economy began to grow, it began to reactivate,” he said while participating in a launch activity for the external sector of his political organization.
“Here we exaggerate, of course. With this growth, it has been said that the Dominican Republic grew 12.3 and that was the highest growth in the world,” said the former president of the Republic (1996-2000. 2004-2012), referring to the data presented by the current government.
The former president also said that the current government management has the complex of the Colombian painter Fernando Botero, who paints exaggerated, thick and volumetric figures; for which he refers that the Government, “exaggerates everything, oversizes everything, not only that it is good, it is that they are the best in the world in everything they undertake.”
According to his words, no one in the world grew 12.3, only the Dominican Republic. “It is not true that it grew 12.3, because it came from minus 6.7, and when the economy has been so low, what occurs is a statistical rebound,” explained the president of the FP, so that the 2021, with the year 2019, not with the 2020 when everything stopped. According to these data, when comparing the growth of 2021 with 2019, it gives us 4.7, not 12.3 as the Government has said, “he assured.
In May 2021, the Central Bank said that the economy grew 47% in April, however, the former president explained that this growth was a statistical rebound, “because in April 2020 we had a drop of minus 29”, pointed out.
In the report of the Central Bank on the growth of April 2022, it is observed that it was 4.1, to which Fernández points out: “Did the Dominican economy collapse from 47 to 4? Then if it did not collapse, It is clear that what was said in 2021 did not correspond exactly to the truth, it was much more modest, it was a statistical rebound.
“What is in the background is a manipulation, because the number is not given in the context that occurs,” said the leader of the People’s force.
“We have told the government how things are, but they do not want to understand”
Faced with the government’s request for the opposition to make proposals, Fernández said: “We have made proposals, the only thing that the government moves away from, is not listening to our proposals, we have been saying since 2021 that the priority of the Dominican Republic in economic matter, it was to sow the country, that the agricultural issue became the number one issue for the survival of the Dominican people, but they did not pay attention to us”.
He cited as an example that the Government, seeking to lower prices, presented a legislative initiative to eliminate tariffs on 67 products, including chicken, which today the Government recognizes that the price is high, to which the former president took advantage to remember: “We were the first to notice that the price of chicken was high.”
To lower the price of chicken, the government intends to bring chickens from Brazil without paying customs duties. Faced with this, Fernández considers that it is entering into competition with local producers, who are going to be ruined.
“If we lose the poultry industry, because we start to compete with a country that produces soybeans, that produces corn, and therefore its production cost is lower than ours, we have not solved the problem,” said the president of the FP.
He referred that “The problem has to be solved in a balanced way, the price of chicken is lowered, but there also has to be a return for the producer.”
“We told the government, it is a mistake to import chicken, what has to be imported is corn, the input; what needs to be imported is soybeans, and if you import soybeans and import corn and subsidize the producer, we will have cheap chickens in the Dominican Republic”, he maintained.
“We have told the government how things are, but they do not want to understand, therefore, they are going straight to failure in 2024,” Fernández said.
He acknowledged that the Government later, at least half took an observation. “Indeed they are importing corn, but they are still importing chicken, they half listened, they listened with their right ear, but they did not listen with their left, so they continue to make the mistake of not taking the measures that have to be taken adequately to solve this problem. that we have in the Dominican Republic of rising prices”, he emphasized.
“If you go for rice, I must admit that the Government has done things for rice,” he mentioned the subsidies and zero rate on loans to producers, however, he notes the concern of the producers.
“They are dissatisfied, and why are they dissatisfied, for the same issue of imports, the harvest, the spring of rice enters the month of March and the Government authorized the DRCAFTA rice tariff quota in the month of February, so that The spring harvest entered at the same time with the imports”, he criticized.
According to the exhibitions, this situation generates an overproduction of the cereal and a collapse of the price that ruins the producers.
He concluded his words by saying that he sees a risk of backsliding, since the Government does not even know the moment, what it should take into account for what should be done.
