Energy costs and taxes affect industry

[NewsWhore]

An article published in today's Hoy newspaper says that the DR industrial market's competitiveness has deteriorated over the last six or seven years due to increases in the costs of energy, transitory taxes, and five fiscal reforms that have weighed heavily on the industrial sector. Rafael Alvarez Crespo, president of the Haina Business Association, said that the situation has become critical in the wake of the implementation of DR-CAFTA. Crespo warns that if no solution is found, a large part of the sector will in fact disappear. According to Hoy, 48% of businesses are less profitable than they were five years ago, and 24% remain the same. Yandra Portela, president of the DR Association of Industries (AIRD) says that these declines are in contrast to the increase in profitability in the same sectors in the US, which have increased by 18% in the same five-year period. Portela and many others have pointed to the high cost of electricity as the main reason for this difference. Portela added that DR-CAFTA would provide major challenges because 60% of imported goods will enter the country without tariffs, and that the proposed fiscal reform should have begun long before DR-CAFTA was signed. She concluded by saying that for the DR, competing with the US and the EU would be tough going.

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