The Presidency Administrative Minister reported that the government plans to promote next year a comprehensive tax reform similar to the one sponsored by President Joaquín Balaguer in the early 1990s, notably in 1992.
Jose Ignacio Paliza He said it is mandatory to implement the said reform so that the sectors that do not pay today are formalized, while the sectors that have a lot of weight on themselves in the contributions they make to the economy can be given some reprieve to allow them help to be more competitive.
To knock He trusted that this tax reform will help the government get better debt collectionsbecause it’s a smarter way to collect.
The official added that this will help or lessen the economic difficulties facing the country I look forward to next year and the years to come.
He argued that it is a comprehensive reform that cannot be imposed, but it must be the product of a good conversation between all sectors, both public and private.
“We should not forget that the last comprehensive tax reform took place in the 1990s, when, as a result of the agreements President Joaquín Balaguer had signed with international organizations, it forced us to implement a series of reforms, not only in the tax field, but also in other areas. areas that have boosted the economy, ”said the former senator when interviewed by Héctor Herrera Cabral about the D´AGENDA program, which is broadcast every Sunday by Telesistema Canal 11.
He argued that these reforms led to a climate of significant growth when the Dominican Liberation Party came to power in 1996.
“ Well, we have to go back to a reform similar to that of 1992, in that it is thought through, comprehensive, that it is not a patch to cover a possible crisis, or to generate a collection for it time that may be necessary, but rather let it be a national project that we are all involved in and that is not a shock, but an incentive ”, he reasoned.
The administrative minister of the Presidency recognized that the tax reform of the early 1990s lowered several taxes.
“They must be done, in some cases they increase, in others they decreaseYou will also have to reinvent them. There are some industries that have lived with historical exemptions that do not necessarily pay in favor of the country at the level or amount of exemptions they receive, ”Minister Paliza warned.
Reminded me that there are social groups that have not even been able to formalize so far, and of course all those reforms that are being planned also require a commitment from the government.
In this sense, he recognized that no one wants to contribute to the system anymore if he does not see that the use of public funds is respected, redirects expenditure appropriately, that is, that these revenues are used fairly and transparently.
He says waste was worse than the Covid
According to José Paliza, the disorganization and waste that existed in the past has made the consequences for the country worse than those caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“It is that, apart from the pandemic and crisis it has caused, we have encountered other realities towards the state that may lie deeper in its aftermath than those that the coronavirus can cause,” the minister complained. of the Presidency.
He added that this level of disorganization and waste was so great that amid the worst health crisis the country has experienced, one of the major regional hospitals such as Cabral and Báez in Santiago has been renovated for eight years.
“And that enough money has been spent to build two hospitalsThat is the governmental governance model that we have inherited, ”the official lamented.
He insisted that, from the simplest to the most complex, they had obvious shortcomings, and that the current government has had to spend a lot of time organizing the house and getting it running.
“And that’s why this four-month journey that President Luis Abinader has to make is much more cumbersome,” he explains.
He argued that there are a large number of institutions with dual responsibilities, high accumulated debtBoth socially and economically, which is why it has not been so easy to control these problems, some of which will take years to solve.
As an example, he cited the state’s millionaire investment in the construction of the Monte Grande Dam, the purpose of which is to contain the water of the Yaque del Sur River so that it does not continue to cause damage in the event of flooding.
He said it logically has functions of irrigating and producing drinking water for the people in its sphere of influence, but this work did not envisage building aqueducts or irrigation channels.
“Therefore, the social profitability that the project is supposed to generate is not guaranteed, and those are the things we have been dealing with in these four months,” he emphasized.