It is not often that four positive news items emerge from public sector institutions in the same day, as happened on Tuesday with the Central Bank, the Customs Department, the Reserve Bank and the Ministry of Finance.
For the first time in the country’s economic history, the Central Bank ends a year with net international reserves of US$14,436.50 million, equivalent, according to that entity, to 12.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and almost six months of imports.
The Customs Directorate reported another milestone: an annual collection of RD$230.900 million, that is, 60% more than in 2019.
The third achievement, although an asterisk must be placed on it, comes from the Ministry of Finance, and is that the public debt as a percentage of GDP at the end of 2022 is lower than that of August 2020, when the current authorities took office. The asterisk is because although in that period the public sector indebtedness was reduced from 61% to 59.1%, the total amount of debt has increased, in this Government, by more than 9,000 million dollars.
To complete yesterday’s favorable medal table, the Banco de Reservas also had its record by reaching, (it says that it is the only one in the financial sector) one million credit cards issued and in force.
From elCaribe we welcome the fact that this news comes from the public sector, although it does not surprise us because both the Central Bank and Customs and the Reserve Bank were among the most efficient agencies included in a series of special reports that we published on the occasion of the end of the year, in which that the inefficient were the least.
Precisely the list of efficient, and which will undoubtedly have influenced the achievement of the four records discussed here, was led by President Luis Abinader, standing out as a good manager and because, we quote what was written on December 19: “He knows how to take advantage of them to the capacities of its government team in each circumstance”.
This assertion is easy to verify in the almost simultaneous announcements by the Treasury, the Central Bank, Customs and the Reserve Bank.
