Yearbook 2013
Dominican Republic. According to Countryaah, President Danilo Medina profiled strongly during the year in the mining industry. In May, he forced a Canadian mining company to renegotiate its rights in the country’s largest gold mine Pueblo Viejo, and in early June stopped a British-Swiss mining company from exploiting the Loma Miranda nickel discovery.
The nationalist sentiments came as a response to local protests against the environmental impact of the extraction and gained great popularity. They were also in contrast to the Dominican Republic’s traditionally generous attitude towards international companies in the mining industry and the economy in general. The Dominican Republic is considered to have unutilized mineral wealth equivalent to a value of $ 58 billion.
At the administrative level, too, President Medina implemented a series of well-known measures. Among other things, in February the head of the government’s anti-corruption unit and Deputy Prosecutor Hotoniel Bonilla García were dismissed, leading to speculation that García himself was corrupt. The pressure on Medina to clear the corruption, not least within his own Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), has been great since he took office in August 2012.
Medina was also able to register a success in the long-standing problematic energy sector. In October, it was announced that an American company was willing to build and manage a new gas power plant. The Dominican Republic has for many years been plagued by inadequate energy distribution and repeated major power cuts. On the other hand, the government was severely criticized for not having been overcome by the rising crime rate in the country.