Industries: Rid the State of duplicity of functions a top priority

Santo Domingo.- For Dominican Republic’s Industries Association(AIRD), the institutional reform process must be a top priority for the countryto eliminate the duplication of functions and achieve effective implementationof each of the pending Electricity and Fiscal pacts.

AIRD executive vice president Circe Almánzar, accompanied byorganization president Campos De Moya, said important agreements have been reachedin the electricity pact, which in her view is advanced, and industries proposeto first reduce the electricity deficit to culminate the agreement "which hascost a lot of work."

"And then devote ourselves to an institutional reformto allow the effective implementation of each of these agreements becausewithout a strong structure that eliminates duplication of institutions and toachieve the objectives of the Fiscal Pact, as stated in the NationalDevelopment Strategy (END), it would make no sense to agree on a fiscal pact,"Almanzar said, interviewed by diariolibre.com.

She stressed that it’s the corporate sector’s unifiedposition, which was proposed by the National Business Council (CONEP).

The business leader noted recalled that it’s not about atax reform but a Fiscal Pact instead, whose legal mandate refers to rationalizedpublic spending, efficiency in the structure of government agencies, such ashow to provide greater services to the population and ensure that "thefamous tax incentives or exemptions from clumping together in the tax Code toeliminate distortions there and be more unified, having a consistency."

She said the project the END establishes until 2030 statesthe importance of achieving greater efficiency in collection, which for industryis the most important point. "The industrial sector has always raised theneed to provide tax equity to productive sectors, that is, how to avertprivileges to one sector over another because that’s what creates unfaircompetition and also creates problems, even for the State in efficiency."