Former Dominican Republic president Danilo Medina said the government led by the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) is proving very costly for the country. Medina, who serves as president of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), made the comments at the close of a well-attended provincial assembly in Duvergé, in Independencia province.
Medina said the state's functional areas are being divided up among officials while services that are failing go without effective solutions. He was accompanied at the event by PLD secretary general Johnny Pujols.
Medina argued that the crisis in the electricity sector stems from inefficiency and neglect, saying the current authorities failed to make the investments needed during their own first term in office.
He said his own administration had kept the electricity subsidy below 500 million dollars and that the installed power generation capacity at the time was enough to prevent service interruptions. Medina, who governed the Dominican Republic from 2012 to 2020, said the current government discontinued those projects because it spent its first four years focused on pursuing officials from past administrations.
Public debt impact
Medina said interest payments on the public debt now stand at 362 billion pesos, which he said amounts to a daily outlay of 1 billion pesos for citizens.
He also said accumulated losses in the electricity sector had reached 105 billion pesos. Current spending has risen sharply as well, he said, with the public payroll increasing from 304 billion to 377 billion pesos and the budget allocated to pensions rising from 34 billion to nearly 60 billion pesos.
Fuel prices and new taxes
On fuel, Medina criticized the fiscal measures the government has announced, saying prices for petroleum derivatives are rising on a weekly basis.
The PLD president said tax pressure and rising operating costs are directly hurting the middle class, which he said made up the majority of the population by the end of his own administration.
He also said the constant creation of new taxes is damaging commercial activity and driving small and medium-sized businesses out of business across the country.
