I.A.D.B. and World Bank consider banks’ fraud aggravated poverty in Dominican Republic

from The Dominican Today

Dominican banks' demise on account of fraudulent handlings zoomed poverty levels up from 27% to 42%

Santo Domingo.- The economic crisis that came about during the period 2002 and 2004 due to the bankruptcy of three important private banks shot poverty levels up in the Dominican Republic from a 27 percentage to 42%, which represented 1.5 million additional poor individuals, according to the World Bank (WB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The data divulged by these entities in their report on poverty in the Dominican Republic indicates that the crisis registered during this period “caused a significant deterioration of the real income and a noticeable increment by 50% of the poverty rate in the country.”

The entities define the “poor” as those persons “with insufficient income to assume the minimum cost of their basic needs,” namely food, housing, health, education and clothing.

The report on poverty in the country elaborated by the WB and the IDB, also points that during the same period, 670 thousand persons moved to live in extreme poverty -- that is, 7.2% of the total population.

Those living in extreme poverty have income that is so low, insufficient even to cover for basic food nourishment “with a minimum caloric level.”

The addition of more than two million 100 thousand persons that since entered the poverty and extreme poverty brackets, emerged specifically during the period “comprised as of the beginning of the year 2002 till the end of 2004,” according to findings by the international entities.

Investigations of the credit transnational organizations also established that “in 2004, 42 out of each 100 Dominicans lived in poverty, and of these, 16 of every 100, in extreme povery.