SANTO DOMINGO — The Dominican Republic, the largest economy in the CAFTA trade group, is seeing signs of recovery.
BY JOACHIM BAMRUD
Osvaldo Oller, a director of the Oller Group, sees real estate in tourism areas like Punta Cana, Puerto Plata and Samana picking up after months of low or no demand. ”There’s a noticeable improvement,” he says. The Oller Group is involved in real estate, construction and tourism.
Foreign investors are also becoming more upbeat, thanks to recent official statements that GDP grew by 1.4 percent in the first half. “Prompted by the first half’s positive reading, which we view as a true testament to Dominican Republic’s resilience, we are raising our full-year growth forecast for 2009 to 2.0 percent,” JP Morgan analyst Franco Uccelli said in a commentary last week. Although lower than official estimates, that clearly marks an improvement over JP Morgan’s earlier estimate of zero growth.
