The Dominican Confederation of Micro, Small and Medium Construction Companies Inc., (COPYMECON), expressed its affinity with the weightings made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the growth of the economy for the current year 2023, which only It will be 4% and asked the country’s financial intermediation entities to make bureaucratic procedures more flexible so that construction MiPymes can access the benefits that soft loans represent and thus boost the growth of the economy.
The IMF projected that the economy of the Dominican Republic will grow 4.2% in 2023. But, in the conclusions of the mission that visited the country, it indicates that “the post-pandemic recovery has moderated, and growth is projected to decrease slightly from 4.9% in 2022 to around 4% in 2023, thus facilitating the return of inflation to the target set by the Central Bank”.
SMEs
The president of COPYMECON, Eliseo Cristopher, expressed that this assessment has been pointed out by the institution he presides over, on several occasions, because a sector such as Construction SMEs, which move the largest number of jobs in the country in a formal, informal and induced way, has not had an equitable participation in the release of funds from the legal reserve, amounting to billions of pesos.
Cristopher added that despite the fact that the governor of the Central Bank, Héctor Valdez Albizu, pointed out that the calls to place the released funds are financial intermediation institutions, but that small construction companies have not had the luck to achieve obtain even a minimum loan.
“It is true that the economy of the Dominican Republic has been one of the most dynamic and resilient in the American continent in the last two decades, but it would be stronger if MiPymes had the participation in the distribution of the funds released from the legal reserve, since that they move local economies and are a quick source of return of capital”, stated Cristopher.
In addition, to be sources of development for the country, contributing to the reduction of the housing deficit, the development of infrastructures and narrowing the poverty gap in the most vulnerable sectors of the nation, as well as promoting formalization, which would be achieved assuming the recommendations of the IMF “initiatives to increase income in a lasting way, by broadening the tax base and reducing exemptions, could also support fiscal sustainability”.
