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Dominican Republic: Countries
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The Dominican Republic’s most important trading partner is the United States (75% of export revenues). Other markets include Canada, Western Europe, and Japan. The country exports free-trade-zone manufactured products (garments, medical devices, etc.), nickel, sugar, coffee, cacao, and tobacco. It imports petroleum, industrial raw materials, capital goods, and foodstuffs. On September 5, 2005, the Dominican Congress ratified a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. and five Central American countries, known as CAFTA-DR. The CAFTA-DR agreement entered into force for the Dominican Republic on March 1, 2007.
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Verizon Wireless customers in the United States and wireless customers of the Dominican Republic company can already take advantage of roaming capability between the two countries. The service became active in November.
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In February, the Dominican Republic's telecommunications chief suspended the Creole-language news program of a popular Dominican radio station based in the southwest region of the country, near the Haitian border. After receiving complaints from Haiti's de facto military rulers, the Dominican authorities barred Radio Enriquillo from transmitting its news program in Creole, the Haitian language. The program is widely heard in Haiti. Since the ruthless supression of the Haitian press, which began on the first day of the September 30, 1991 military coup in Haiti, Radio Enriquillo has been a main source of information for Haitians on developments in their own country -- including human rights abuses by the army -- as well as on the progress of international negotiations for the restoration of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. By seeking to silence Radio Enriquillo's Creole broadcasts to Haiti, Dominican authorities have become a party to the Haitian military's efforts to impose a blackout on all independent sources of information reaching the Haitian people. The banning of the Creole program ... marked the beginning of a crackdown on local Dominican popular organizations that have sought peacefully to demonstrate their support for Radio Enriquillo.
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The Dominican Republic is the fastest growing tourism destination in the Caribbean. The country now boasts over 60,000 hotel rooms (over 670 hotels) including over 20 hotels built in the last two years alone. In 2006, for the first time ever, Americans accounted for the majority of international visitors. Europeans account for less than 40%. Getting to and getting around the Dominican Republic is easy with many regional and international airports. This is ... one of the world's premier destinations for golf, with over 22 courses designed by the industry's most famous names: Robert Trent Jones, Pete Dye, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tom Fazio to name a few.
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An ongoing concern in the Dominican Republic is the inability of participants in the electricity sector to establish financial viability for the system. Three regional electricity distribution systems were privatized in 1998 via sale of 50% of shares to foreign operators; the Mejía administration repurchased all foreign-owned shares in two of these systems in late 2003. The third, serving the eastern provinces, is operated by U.S. concerns and is 50% U.S.-owned. The World Bank records that electricity distribution losses for 2005 totaled about 38.2%, a rate of losses exceeded in only three other countries. Industry experts estimate distribution losses for 2006 will surpass 40%, primarily due to low collection rates, theft, infrastructure problems and corruption. At the close of 2006, the government had exceeded its budget for electricity subsidies, spending close to U.S. $650 million.
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The Dominican government's human rights practices on its state-owned sugarcane plantations in 1992 were shaped by two events in the Dominican Republic and Haiti in 1991. One, between the months of June and September 1991, was the Dominican authorities' summary expulsion from the country of as many as 6,000 Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian origin, and the flight to Haiti of tens of thousands of others who sought to avoid forced deportation. The other was the bloody September 30, 1991 military coup in Haiti, which ousted the first democratically elected Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide; resulted in the mass killing of civilians; systematically trampled basic civil and political rights; and provoked a hemisphere-wide trade embargo. The military takeover in Haiti led thousands of Haitians and Dominico-Haitians to cross the border once again, to return to the country that only months earlier had grievously mistreated them. Once more, many were compelled to cut sugarcane on government plantations.
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