Come clean on Santo Domingo-Santiago railway, think tank warns

Santo Domingo.- An economic think tank executive on Wed. warned the Government to come clean on the plan to build a Santo Domingo-Santiago railway with financing by China.

“We really have not done a feasibility study for a project like that. That should be studied, the first thing is that the Government should make available to the population the study with the assumptions and results of the study of a project of this magnitude,” said Ernesto Selman, vice president of the Regional Center for Sustainable Economic Strategies (CREES).

He said it shouldn’t be carried out like the Punta Catalina power plant, where no details were given and the tender was conducted “in a way that was not very transparent.”

Selman’s statement comes in the heels of president Danilo Medina’s official visit to China where he will meet with president Xi Jinping to discuss some investments here, among them the construction of a Santo Domingo-Santiago railway.