This Review focuses on improving access to quality and timely services for citizens as a means to facilitate inclusive growth in the Dominican Republic. Despite its macroeconomic performance in the last decade, poverty and levels of inequalities remain high in the Dominican Republic. At the same time, citizens report limited satisfaction with the quality and access to services in the country, often reflected in less than optimal outcomes in areas such as health, transport or education. The review's focus on service delivery offers the opportunity to apply the concepts and tools of public governance at an operational level and with immediate implications for the government-citizen relationship. The inclusion of multidisciplinary good practices, collected through OECD work on public sector management, digital government, innovation or administrative simplification, allows a comprehensive but integrated assessment of the use of public policy levers for optimizing service design and delivery. By covering aspects relating both to the competence of government – in terms of the quality, timeliness and effectiveness of public services – and to the principles governing the provision of services – including engagement, accountability or inclusiveness, this review identifies policy recommendations to improve access, coverage and quality of public services, regardless of income levels, location and other social and economic factors – as a key lever to achieve more inclusive growth. 
 

This report presents a detailed analysis of the Dominican Republic’s financial system and offers a series recommendations to develop the country’s capital markets. The country has recently made big advances in the development of its capital markets, achieving high solvency in the banking sector, improving  the institutional framework for the management of public debt and experiencing steady growth in the value of both the private bond market and the assets of pension funds. However, the level of financing directed to the economy is still small, given the country’s level of development, and there are important structural challenges that need to be addressed. Both the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry issue public debt, each with different purposes, and there appears to be little coordination between the two organs in terms of rate of returns and maturity of the issued bonds. The primary market of private bonds suffers from a long and complicated issuing process that stems from coordination and communication problems among the different regulators. The bond secondary market lacks key aspects of market infrastructure. Finally, institutional investors invest mostly on public debt instruments and bonds issued by finance sector firms.

This review represents a new policy approach for public sector reviews, linking the traditional thematic public employment and strategic human resource management (HRM) framework to public sector innovation and service delivery challenges in the Dominican Republic. The study is based on lessons learned from the experience of OECD member and key partner countries, starting with an economic and institutional analysis of the Dominican context in a broader regional perspective. The report provides a detailed diagnosis of its public employment management and pragmatic solutions for improving it. The recommendations are based on assessments in the following priority areas: the use of strategic workforce planning and management, the state's ability to acquire and retain workforce competencies and enhancing government's core values, performance management and leadership, HRM reforms and the capacity to implement innovative approaches for a more efficient and effective public administration leading to better service delivery.

This report sets out some of the short-, medium- and long-term challenges for fiscal policy in the Dominican Republic. The population’s spending demands must be met but macroeconomic sustainability must be maintained. In particular, public finances must be sustainable in the long term to create the stable, predictable financing needed to meet the commitments set forth in the National Development Strategy. The environment must minimise the distortions created by tax policy and more broadly by fiscal policy. The recommendations made in this document focus on certain instruments that can generate revenue to finance spending needs and reduce distortions, paying special attention to the role of institutions and the political economy in the reform processes. The Dominican tax system is highly fragmented, making tax administration difficult and facilitating tax evasion and avoidance. In particular, the prevalence of tax exemptions reduces the tax bases and makes tax administration very difficult. The tax code dates from 1992, but the bulk of tax legislation lies outside it; this code therefore needs amending to consolidate tax legislation and create stability and legal transparency.

This report contains the 2019 Peer Review Report on the Exchange of Information on Request of the Dominican Republic.

This third edition of Government at a Glance Latin America and the Caribbean provides the latest available evidence on public administrations and their performance in the LAC region and compares it to OECD countries. This publication includes indicators on public finances and economics, public employment, centres of government, regulatory governance, open government data, public sector integrity, public procurement and for the first time core government results (e.g. trust, inequality reduction). Governance indicators are especially useful for monitoring and benchmarking governments' progress in their public sector reforms. Each indicator in the publication is presented in a user-friendly format, consisting of graphs and/or charts illustrating variations across countries and over time, brief descriptive analyses highlighting the major findings of the data, and a methodological section on the definition of the indicator and any limitations in data comparability.

Health at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2020 presents key indicators on health and health systems in 33 Latin America and the Caribbean countries. This first Health at a Glance publication to cover the Latin America and the Caribbean region was prepared jointly by OECD and the World Bank. Analysis is based on the latest comparable data across almost 100 indicators including equity, health status, determinants of health, health care resources and utilisation, health expenditure and financing, and quality of care. The editorial discusses the main challenges for the region brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as managing the outbreak as well as mobilising adequate resources and using them efficiently to ensure an effective response to the epidemic. An initial chapter summarises the comparative performance of countries before the crisis, followed by a special chapter about addressing wasteful health spending that is either ineffective or does not lead to improvement in health outcomes so that to direct saved resources where they are urgently needed.

Many Latin American countries have experienced improvements in income over recent decades, with several of them now classified as high-income or upper middle-income in terms of conventional metrics. But has this change been mirrored in improvements across the different areas of people’s lives? How’s Life in Latin America? Measuring Well-being for Policy Making addresses this question by presenting comparative evidence for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with a focus on 11 LAC countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay). Spanning material conditions, quality of life, resources for future well-being, and inequalities, the report presents available evidence on well-being both before and since the onset of the pandemic, based on the OECD Well-being Framework. It also identifies priorities for addressing well-being gaps and describes how well-being frameworks are used in policy within Latin America and elsewhere around the world, providing lessons for governments on what is needed to put people’s well-being at the centre of their action. The report is part of the EU Regional Facility for Development in Transition for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Digitalisation is transforming the world of work and societies, and creating opportunities to learn and develop skills in new ways, times and places. The adoption and use of digital technologies can help Latin American countries close the skills gap with more advanced economies. Making the Most of Technology for Learning and Training in Latin America demonstrates how Latin American countries can realise the potential of new technologies for skills development in schools and all stages of life. It identifies barriers to accessing ICT infrastructure and connectivity limitations in Latin America, and provides recommendations on how they can be overcome to ensure that all students and citizens can benefit from new technologies for learning. The report explores the relationship between technology use in initial education and students’ performance in Latin America, and how policies can best support teachers as digital tools enter their classrooms. Digitalisation provides new opportunities for lifelong learning and this report examines the potential of open education and MOOCs in reaching those adults who are most in need of training in Latin American countries.

The Dominican Republic has made strides on many socioeconomic fronts over the years. The country has been one of the leading economies in Latin America and the Caribbean in terms of GDP growth, reaching upper middle-income status in 2011. However, progress on the different dimensions of well-being has been insufficient. In particular, socioeconomic and territorial disparities are still important, and public institutions remain insufficiently solid. For the Dominican Republic to embark on a more prosperous development path, three critical dimensions must be tackled. First, providing quality jobs for all, with particular emphasis on boosting formalisation and productive transformation. Second, mobilising more public and private finance for development, with more progressive and effective taxation systems, more efficient public expenditure and deeper capital markets. Third, accelerating digital transformation to boost productivity, enhance inclusion and support job creation.

Peer reviews of competition law and policy are a valuable tool to reform and strengthen a country’s competition framework. This peer review of the Dominican Republic presents the evolution of its competition regime over the last few years and assesses the effectiveness of its current competition law and policy. It provides recommendations to help the Dominican Republic strengthen its competition regime and institutions, developed and discussed at the Peer Review examination carried out during the 2023 OECD-IDB Latin American and Caribbean Competition Forum.

The Dominican Republic, though the fastest-growing economy in Latin America and the Caribbean since 2010, cannot afford complacency. The COVID-19 crisis may accelerate existing global trends that created the need for reforms addressing structural weaknesses that lurked beneath the surface well before the pandemic. The current situation demands an unpreceded policy effort to ensure a prompt and effective health response, and to guarantee short-term support for workers and firms. The enduring challenge will be updating the country’s development model through targeted reforms. The Production Transformation Policy Review (PTPR) of the Dominican Republic identifies priority reforms to update the national strategy, with perspectives on agro-food and nearshoring. It benefitted from peer review from the United States Reshoring Institute and the Ministry of Agriculture of Brazil.

This report compiles comparable tax revenue statistics over the period 1990-2018 for 26 Latin American and Caribbean economies. Based on the OECD Revenue Statistics database, it applies the OECD methodology to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to enable comparison of tax levels and tax structures on a consistent basis, both among the economies of the region and with other economies. This publication is jointly undertaken by the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, the OECD Development Centre, the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The 2020 edition is produced with the support of the EU Regional Facility for Development in Transition for Latin America and the Caribbean, which results from joint work led by the European Union, the OECD and its Development Centre, and ECLAC.

This report compiles comparable tax revenue statistics over the period 1990-2019 for 27 Latin American and Caribbean economies. Based on the OECD Revenue Statistics database, it applies the OECD methodology to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to enable comparison of tax levels and tax structures on a consistent basis, both among the economies of the region and with other economies. This publication is jointly undertaken by the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, the OECD Development Centre, the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The 2021 edition is produced with the support of the EU Regional Facility for Development in Transition for Latin America and the Caribbean, which results from joint work led by the European Union, the OECD and its Development Centre, and ECLAC.

This report compiles comparable tax revenue statistics over the period 1990-2020 for 27 Latin American and Caribbean economies. Based on the OECD Revenue Statistics database, it applies the OECD methodology to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to enable comparison of tax levels and tax structures on a consistent basis, both among the economies of the region and with other economies. This publication is jointly undertaken by the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, the OECD Development Centre, the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).