How a businessman-turned-president is bringing confidence – and growth – to the Dominican Republic
By Doreen Hemlock
Record tourism. Record foreign investment. Strong economic growth. And a shift toward online government to slash time for permits and tame corruption. The Dominican Republic is modernizing under the two-year-old administration of businessman-turned-President Luis Abinader, and his push for data-driven, accountable government is boosting confidence in the Caribbean nation of nearly 11 million people, even improving its credit ratings. The optimism shone when Abinader visited Miami in late January to meet with Dominicans, talk with tourism leaders, and enjoy the wedding of singer Marc Anthony. Abinader earned standing ovations when addressing 400-plus Dominicans at Miami-Dade College, including howls of approval for his efforts to develop a government staff comprised of “public servants.”
“It’s not easy, because in our Latin American countries, there’s been a culture of bureaucracy,” where government employees too often think that the longer they make people wait, the more they show “who’s boss,” Abinader told the audience. “We have to change that mentality.” Digitizing government processes and tracking paperwork online helps cut opportunities for delays – and for graft, he says.
An outsider not from either of his country’s two main parties, Abinader never held political office before becoming president in 2020. Yet he has ample management experience, helping grow his family’s portfolio of hotels and other businesses and amassing a net worth estimated at $70 million. An economist by training, he studied at top schools in the Dominican Republic and the U.S., even taking courses at Harvard. He was elected on a platform of bringing transparency to government and expanding the economy.
Taking office only months into the COVID-19 pandemic, in a country where tourism makes up 15 percent of the economy, he maneuvered masterfully. His administration quickly distributed vaccines to travel industry workers and welcomed back visitors – no vaccine required – pledging to host tourists on government expense should they come down with COVID. By January 2022, The New York Times headlined a lengthy article: “Why is Everyone Going to the Dominican Republic?”
At the end of 2022, Abinader’s land of beaches, baseball, and bachata music had surpassed its 2019 pre-COVID visitor numbers by 1 million to reach a record tally of 7.2 million by air and 1.3 million by sea, including cruise passengers in Puerto Plata. The World Tourism Organization calls it the best recovery of any nation, cementing the Dominican Republic’s position as the No. 1 travel destination in the Caribbean.
That tourism helped stoke the economy. After shrinking by 7 percent in 2020 from COVID’s early impact, economic growth jumped by 12 percent in 2021 then stabilized last year at 5 percent, the same rate the country averaged from 2000 to 2019 when it ranked among Latin America’s best performers.
This year, even amid worries of global recession, economists forecast a 4.5 percent gain, bolstered by hefty foreign investment in hotels, agribusiness, and other projects. In 2022, the country welcomed a record $4 billion in foreign direct investment, not counting purchases of second homes, says Abinader.
Helping encourage investors is the administration’s “Zero Bureaucracy” program. Abinader, in an unusual show of collaboration for a Latin American leader, gave most of his time at Miami-Dade College to his chief of competitiveness, Peter Prazmowski, to explain that initiative in detail.
In a nutshell, “Zero Bureaucracy” aims to digitize applications for government permits in order to spur the economy. The program began with an inventory of processes and is now bringing the most important and commonly used ones online. Already completed: a 24/7 electronic system for the Dominican Customs agency to speed up the handling of goods at seaports and airports.
That’s important for South Florida, because the Dominican Republic is the No. 1 trade partner of Broward County’s seaport Port Everglades, No. 3 in trade for Miami International Airport, and No. 4 for PortMiami, says Jacobo Fernandez, Dominican consul in Miami. Set for completion this year is a centralized, online system for construction permits, linking varied agencies and tracking all documents. Once in place, applicants will no longer need to travel from office to office, spending time and money, and top managers will be able to check document flow to unclog bottlenecks, says Praznowski. The government is also setting up phone hotlines and special kiosks in all major cities nationwide, and in consulates abroad, to help people navigate the new systems.
The payoff promises to be big. Just the excess time it takes to get through Dominican bureaucracy, compared to the time in more developed nations, costs the country some $4 billion every year, Praznowski says. That’s nearly half the annual cash that Dominicans overseas send back to loved ones in their homeland, money that’s often “bread out of their own mouths,” the president says.
Abinader offered personal examples to illustrate the costs. He recalled how his family was developing a new hotel, slated to employ 600 people directly and 2,000 in-directly. Obtaining permits took four years. The digital system should shrink the process to 10 months, creating jobs faster, he says.
“And it’s not only about time and money,” says Praznowski. “We’re talking about a cultural and institutional change without precedent in the country.”
For Delfin Espinal, 56, a dual Dominican-U.S. citizen who lives in Miami and owns an auto business, the president’s approach is “excellent.” Espinal says he’d never voted in Dominican elections before but turned out for Abinader because of his push to fight corruption and modernize the country. “Abinader has a conviction for hard work and transparency,” says Espinal. “That generates real confidence.”
