Miguel Ceara Hatton applauds Medina UN speech

The former director of the Human Development Reports for the United Nations in the Dominican Republic, economist Miguel Ceara Hatton has praised President Danilo Medina's speech at the United Nations earlier this week. "That is the point of view we have sustained in all our books and writing in the past 10 or 15 years. It implies a break with the conception that equates national development to growth and not to people's quality of life," he said. The social policy specialist said that if President Medina maintains this viewpoint, the Dominican government economic team would need to be retrained. He said that the local practice is to base all evaluations on the Gross Domestic Product.

Economist Nelson Suarez said that while not new, President Medina's stance sends a signal that the focus of development will now be based more on the criteria of human development and welfare of the people and less on the growth that is only reflected in macroeconomic statistics. He said that the system is not working in the large groups that control the global economy. "It is not possible to continue this and it is a good message that President calls the attention on this," said Suarez.

Speaking at the 67th General Assembly of the United Nations on Tuesday 25 September, President Danilo Medina argued for international financial institutions to make changes to the indicators used to measure economic performance and to introduce more effective tools for measuring human development.

In his remarks at the UN, the Dominican leader said that most agencies in the international financial system prefer to continue using "one-dimensional measurements" centered on monetary income n through the use of various measures of profit or national production expressed in per capita figures, for example to measure and catalogue the development of developing countries and to define policies on conditions of access to international financial cooperation.

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