as I have said here many times QUALITY CONTROL sux in the DR if it does not improve our exports will never be respected

I agreee. Education is needed!! Training is needed. DR is now competing with the big boys. They need to invest in their people so they have the right tools to compete. Otherwise, DR will lose out on the DR-CAFTA and will see increased deficit from global trading as well

yes exactly CAFTA is an opportunity to be used not wasted

Made in the Dominican Republic

will be seen as

Made in China

If we don't do anything about this

actually, ny4life, the dr is already losing out in global trading. notice the 668 million trade deficit with the usa in an earlier report this month. dr-cafta holds very little promise in the short term, because of lax quality control and very little ability to compete. ask yourself why butter from new zealand, which is of the highest quality, is 25% cheaper on supermarket shelves than local butter, which tastes like 40 weight lubrication oil. as i have noted before, competitiveness has always been stifled here, and, as such, we have never had any benchmarks for quality. now that we have to take on the outside boys, our stuff does not measure up.we have always been complacent about the quality of things here, to the point of virtual self deception; now the chickens are coming home to roost.

as a further aside, i wonder what the supporters of the government have to say when they read the education and preparedness statistics adumbrated in the article; do they still believe that the metro was a good idea?

I thought there was an imperialistic, colonial, capitalistic, reactionary, paper-tigerish plot by Western exploiters to drain the hard earned surplus of the working people of the world as they struggle to take their rightful place in the community of nations .. what happend to the colorful Marxist-Lenninist albeit anachronistic rhetoric? What happened to all the talk of "class struggle" and "dialectical materialism"? Did it die with "Muddy Karl"? "Muddy Mao"? "Muddy Lenin"? "Muddy Che"? "Muddy Fidel"?

sangwong;
Personally, I think it ishappening because people FINALY got their WATER FILTERS installed by the experts, whereas before they thought they were drinking HARD WATER because of all the lumps andgrittiness.

Whadda' ya' think???

TB

This does not sound so negative to me,actually it sounds pretty good unless your a commie.the DR is #5 on the list..." Chile captured the top spot on the index, followed by Panama, Peru and Uruguay. The worst country by far is Venezuela, which managed to score lower than Haiti because of higher inflation, less economic freedom and a lower ranking from the World Bank's ease of doing business survey. Bolivia, Nicaragua and Honduras joined Venezuela and Haiti as Latin America's worst countries for business."...these are the four countries that ranked ahead of the DR and then followed by all in between and the last five in the basement or "circling the drain"

For the most part, Dominican producers of industrial and canned farm products are still using the technology of the 1930's.
This includes the system of "Quality Control", which was, "if it don't stink, it's OK".
I compare the "gross weight" of canned foods with the "net weight" of product andfind that thedifferences are in the neighborhood of 40-50%, which represents the water content. Compare that with foreign products of the same items and the difference is around 5-8% water content. My question is why?
You figue it out for yourself. It looks like the Dominican producers are giving the public a Royal Screwing and making a fortune while doing so.

TexasBill

yes and who owns these local large companies that produce this substandard rubbish ? mostly the traditional Latino Oligarchos ....Let us hope the party for them is over its compete or sell out..... the sooner the better

Texas Bill, you are right on point with this, and, sadly, i have to concur with goulet. dominican products are, in the main, substandard in very many aspects, but, because of very exclusionary tactics, the manufacturers have been able to ensure their survival by eliminating competition. i hope people of dominican birth will see this as an article of constructive criticism, one which i wish i did not write. but, as Texas Bill states, in the DR the belief is that if it is not atrocious, it is ok! if you believe that i am being negative or biased, as i have been accused of by people such as arcatype, take a simple test. go buy yourself a bottle of lea and perrins worcestershire sauce, and taste it. then go buy yourself a dominican version, such as constanza. if you can detect any similarity between the two, you are a better man than i. better yet, if you find the local brands to even vaguely reminiscent of worcestershire, i salute you. the same goes for just about everything else.

does anyone in his right mind believe that a soft drink such as red rock should be sold to the public? anyone ever had real marmalade before? then go try a local version, and tell me what you think. these are all simple things to manufacture. why is it that other countries in the caribbean, with lesser resources, can produce a product such as TING? why is it that i can buy a soft drink in new york , made by a company called D AND G, which is world class? because we are accustomed to low standards, and , in a global economy, this is not a good thing. as i said before, value added agricultural products are one way of raising foreign exchange, but, sadly, we have nothing that will sell well abroad. Trinidad gives us Matouks pepper sauce, which is world class. i saw it on sale in a specialty shop in ottawa canada, which only sells hot sauce. jamaica has grace scotch bonnet and red sauces, which are world class. why in God´s name are people forced to buy the local stuff, which is just

vinegar and coloring.? i could go on forever...butter, cheese, some evil bread....i guess you get the point.

then go join your friend the flunky from Caricom on that other pissant island rastaman and dont be comin here after smoking that stuff with your phony DATA and STATISTICS

you and belial go somewhere else to try and start your uprising