Dominican-Haitian border investment initiative gathers steam

Dominican Republic.- The Quisqueya Binational Económc Council (CEBQ) on Thursday presented the project it develops to representatives of Santiago’s free zones, where its directors explained the Dominican-Haitian investment initiative whose launch is imminent.

Dominican Republic representatives Juan B. Vicini and Fernando Chaplain and organization secretary Rafael Paz presented the projects in progress expect to have an economic impact on the border region and invited the entrepreneurs to get involved.

Vicini said the development initiative is focused on four key points of interconnection between Dominican Republic and Haiti, aimed at transforming them into a hub for economic growth and creating jobs on both sides of the border.

"Through sustainable and inclusive investments in a superstructure with logistics and production components, the new urban communities will solve the high concentrations of the major urban centers of each country, achieving social, economic and environmental balance, thus formalizing the flow of trade and spurring job creation," the business leader said.

For Paz, "the four areas of development are Manufacturing and Logistics, to generate and store hydro and wind power, Agriculture and Livestock, and finally Tourism. For all these, studies have been conducted of the potential and feasibility to ensure tangible results in three to five years."

Vicini said the project has a high financing, sophisticated structure, financially as well as legally to ensure their materialization. "Everything is aimed at building a benchmark development model and replicable elsewhere. An experience which accrues and can be decisive because it deals with realities that could change or improve perceptions of the countries involved: Dominican Republic and Haiti."