Dominican Republic lacks transparency: Washington

Washington.- The Dominican Republic figures among the US State Department’s annual list of countries which lack fiscal transparency, in an evaluation released Wednesday, EFE reports.

The report includes 140 countries which must meet minimum fiscal transparency requirements to receive US aid.

According to the document, most of Latin America meets the minimum transparency requirements, including citizen access to budget information or the publication of contracts to extract natural resources. .

In addition to the category of those which comply, the report distinguishes between those with "significant" advances or "no breakthrough."

In the section on the Dominican Republic, the US stressed "the lack of details offered on long proportions of costs incurred by the Office of the President, which is 9 percent of total government spending."

"Fiscal transparency of the Dominican Republic would be strengthened by the adoption of additional measures to improve the completeness of its budget, in particular for the Office of the President," the report says.