TT airlink injects life into DR trade, boosts business

Local businessmen are counting their blessings that airlinks have now been established between Trinidad and Tobago and the Dominican Republic, making the DR markets easily accessible and wide open for investment. The BWIA air link was officially launched on Wednesday  January 21, with an inaugural flight to the capital city of Santo Domingo. More than 50 businessmen took advantage of this opportunity to see what the DR had to offer in terms of open markets for investment. Many came back optimistic that new, profitable business ventures were in the making. Anthony Jordan, Senior Corporate Manager, Trade Finance at Republic Bank, said  that the DR held major potential for trade with its population of over eight million persons. Republic, he said, had conducted business with the DR on a small scale for a number of years, leading up to the acquisition of Banco Mercantil last year.

“The airlinks,” he maintained, “will greatly enhance the potential for trade as we go forward, because to conduct trade you need transportation. We previously had to go through either Miami or Puerto Rico to get to the DR, which took at least eight hours. This new flight takes only two hours. “We see it as a tremendous boost for trade, economic co-operation and tourism.” The Dominican Republic is looking at this new link as a means of enhancing trading relationships between the two countries. Last year the business and investment between TT and the DR increased, with the value of trade now standing at US $400 million. The DR economy is currently supported by four major industries — agriculture, mining, tourism and industrial free zones. According to investment facilitator, Hugo Molina, these free zones are responsible for 70 percent of the country’s total exports and the DR Govern-ment has been working with them since 1969. The country now has approximately 52 industrial parks that employ close to 200,000 persons and carry everything from textiles to medical devices.

These free zones, Molina said, offer a number of incentives to local, regional and foreign companies, the most significant being the ability to import all raw materials and equipment duty free. Companies can also put 20 percent of their production into the local market after one year if they so desire. The next most important activities on the balance of payments are tourism and money transfers from Dominicans living abroad which has served to enhance the DR economy over the past few years. The countries major exports, Molina explained, included blood transfusion equipment, jeans, ferro-nickle and gold jewelry. TT provided a market for the export of more than 100 products, the main ones in 2002 being resins, aluminum, plastic pipes and corrugated cardboard boxes. “In 2003,” he said, “the trade relationship between the Dominican Republic and TT equalled more than US$4 million from DR exports into TT. However, we have a deficit of commercial balance regarding TT which exported more than US $7 million to the DR last year, mostly in hydrocarbons and gas.”

President of the TT Cham-ber of Commerce in the Dominican Republic, Fernando Gonzales Nicolas, expressed his belief that the period of economic difficulty plaguing the country was now coming to an end. The new links between TT and the DR, he said, would have a major role to play in this. He said, “there are many opportunities to be developed between our two nations in business, in export, imports and investments. And this business relationship will develop naturally as a result of the new airlinks, the operation of the free trade agreement between Caricom and the DR and the acquisition of a DR bank by a TT bank.” “The relationship between TT and the DR,” Nicolas continued, “is already an important one. For Dominicans, in the last few years, TT has become one of our most important trading partners in the world, but it is a quiet relationship.” Responding to queries that companies from the DR had expressed interest in listing on the TT Stock Exchange, Nicolas admitted that this was a possibility, since the TTSE had a lot to teach the DR.

He explained that although the Dominican Republic had a Stock Exchange, their companies refused to be listed on the Exchange, which instead was used to trade papers. He said, “I think that the presence of Trinidadian companies in the DR will not only help Dominicans to participate in the Stock Exchange in Port-of-Spain, but also to develop our own local exchange by providing an example.” “It will also be good for the banking sector, since TT has much more tradition where banking is concerned and can help us to develop our banking sector.” In 2003, the DR banking sector underwent a significant change with the passage of the Draft Financial and Monetary Code, which saw the banking system being regulated and the Central Bank becoming independent.