The Central Bank (BCRD) reported that the Monthly Indicator of Economic Activity (IMAE) had a cumulative growth of 5.2% during the first ten months of this yearcompared to 2021, after presenting an interannual variation of 3.8% in October.
The Hotel, bar and restaurant activity exhibited an average interannual variation of 26.8% in terms of real added value, contributing 1.4 percentage points to the growth of the IMAE of 5.2%, which explains a third of the growth so far this year.
The performance of the sector was driven by the external demand for tourism services offered by the country, reflected in the arrival of 5.8 million visitors in the aforementioned period, for an interannual variation of 55.5%.
This dynamism continued into November, when some 571,354 tourists were received, accumulating a total of 6.4 million non-resident passengers that entered the country by air in the first eleven months of 2022, thus achieving a historical record in arrivals for those months in one year, according to preliminary data offered by the Ministry of Tourism.
Additionally, by adding the 1.1 million hikers that arrived on cruise ships through the different ports of the country, a total of 7.5 million visitors were reached in January-November 2022.
Regarding the sector of building, East presented an interannual variation of 1.6% in January-October 2022, a result that reflects a moderation in its growth rate, due to the combination of the substantial increase in the prices of materials such as cement, rebar, among others, used as inputs in this activity, since a readjustment of construction schedules in the current context of rising interest rates.
It is expected that the acceleration in public capital spending, through the execution of important civil engineering and infrastructure projects carried out by the Government, will help to offset the behavior of the sector.
The expansion in value added in trade activities was 6.2% and transport and storage 7.1% is closely linked to the dynamism in the production, distribution and commercialization of agricultural and manufactured goods of local and imported origin, as well as the land flow of passengers.
The joint contribution of these two activities to the growth of the IMAE for January-October was 1.3 percentage points, that is, approximately 25% of the interannual increase of 5.2% referred to above.
The real added value of the manufacturing in free zones has registered an interannual variation of 6.3% in the first ten months of the year. During those months, this sector reached a level of exports of US$6,608.4 million, an additional US$649.1 million (10.9%).
In relation to the local manufacturing, this activity registered a growth of 3.2% in its real value added in January-October 2022 with respect to the same period of the previous year. In particular, it was observed favorable performance in the manufacture of chemical substances and products, the manufacture of beverages and tobacco derivatives, and other manufacturing industries.
The agricultural sector has managed to maintain a positive performance by observing a interannual increase of 8.4% in the month of October, for an accumulated growth of 4.6% in January-October.
This behavior has been supported by the appropriate measures implemented by the Government, through the Ministry of Agriculture and its dependencies, with the interest of providing technical and financial support to agricultural producers at the national level.
Working market
It indicates that the trend that the Dominican economy has reflected in the course of the year allows us to project that the expansion of the real gross domestic product (GDP) could be located at 5.0% at the end of 2022, According to the results of the Central Bank’s forecast system after incorporating the data for October.
It specifies that this result would be materializing in an adverse international context, where risk factors prevail, highlighting the moderation in world economic growth projections and the restrictive stance of monetary policy in most of the world’s economies to control the inflation behavior. In the Dominican case, inflation is expected to return to the target range of 4.0% ± 1%, before the end of the second quarter of 2023.
Sectors
During January-October 2022, the significant incidence of services as a whole stands out, which constitute approximately 60.0% of the total economy and present an interannual variation of 7.0% in the referred period.
Among the activities that comprise it, it is worth noting the performance of hotels, bars and restaurants (26.8%), health (10.7%), other service activities (8.7%), public administration (7.5%), transport and storage (7.1% ), trade (6.2%) and financial services (5.4%). Regarding agriculture, this exhibits a variation of 4.6%, while in industries, the activity of free zones grew 6.3%, local manufacturing 3.2% and construction 1.6%.
The results of the National Continuous Labor Force Survey (ENCFT) conducted during the third quarter of 2022 show that the total number of employed persons (including formal and informal workers) reached 4,633,135 workers, a level similar to that evidenced in the same quarter of 2019. , that is, to the total occupancy observed prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In this way, the employment rate, defined as the ratio between the total employed and the working-age population (PET), stood at 59.2%, 0.3 percentage points higher than that exhibited in the period July-September 2021.
Regarding the open unemployment rate, which is defined as the percentage of unemployed who are actively looking for work, it fell by 3.2 percentage points, from 8.0% registered in January-March 2021 to 4.8% in July-September 2021. 2022, and by 2.0 percentage points when compared to the figure of 6.8% reported in July-September 2021.