NewsWhore
03-07-2007, 07:10 PM
DR-CAFTA gives the Dominican Republic the opportunity to export products made with raw materials from any country. The CAFTA deal is more flexible than the US's NAFTA agreement with Mexico and Canada. This flexibility will allow the DR to attract new investments, not only from countries that don't have a free trade agreement with the United States, but also from Mexican sources. According to Diario Libre, what is happening is that Mexico's agreement with the US stipulates that 50% of raw materials have to come from NAFTA nations, which increases costs. In the case of DR-CAFTA, the raw materials can come from any nation, with the only stipulation being that the final product is manufactured or assembled in the Dominican Republic. In the past, 35% of raw materials of any product shipped to the US under the old Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) had to come from the US. Because of the new flexibility, investors from China and Mexico are considering the possibility of transferring their operations to the Dominican Republic. However, the same conditions that exist for the DR also exist for the Central American CAFTA member nations, and the government must offer enough in the way of incentives to guarantee that the investments come here and not there.
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#5)
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#5)