Something to hide?

[NewsWhore]

Technical Secretary to the President Temistocles Montas has denied reports that the Dominican government is preventing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from publishing reports about the Dominican economy. In a press release, the Central Bank defended the government's unwillingness to publish full IMF reports stating that many years ago many IMF member nations decided that it was not beneficial to print out full reports because they would reveal, in detail, economic reforms without first being evaluated by the proper authorities. Montas, who is also the President's chief economic coordinator, said that the government has always been open to the IMF expressing their opinions on the Dominican economy. Several economic figures including Luis Toral and Guillermo Caram, former governors of the Central Bank and Miguel Ceara Hatton, a well-known economist, demanded more transparency from the government in the handling of the IMF data. Montas said that on 27 October the chief of the IMF mission that oversees the Stand-by agreement, Andy Wolfe, would be delivering a speech to an audience of industrial, financial, political and labor leaders at the National Palace. Wolfe will focus on the state of the Dominican economy. Over the weekend, the newspapers had carried a report from Washington by Spanish news agency EFE, listing the Dominican Republic as one of the countries that limits the publications of the IMF report. It said that both Brazil and the Dominican Republic had prohibited the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from revealing their experts' opinions about their economic policies. Some other countries have done this in the past and in the case of Honduras, the reports were held up for a year. Venezuela is an extreme case due to the fact that they have not allowed the IMF to release any of their evaluations for the past five years. According to IMF spokesperson Masood Ahmed, "sometimes, countries are not comfortable with the publication of the information." The fourth clause of the IMF agreement calls for each IMF member nation to participate in an assessment of their economies, but it is up the countries to publish the report.

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