Designing An Economy For Growth

In 1990, Jamaica’s per-capita GDP was 70% greater than theirs and they had no tourism industry to speak of. The country then barely attracted 250,000 visitors, while Jamaica received more than twice that number.

In just over 30 years, Punta Cana, a small area in the eastern corner of the DR, with a population of under 100,000, has seen the development of more than 35,000 mostly luxury hotel rooms, modern infrastructure and the third-busiest international airport in Central America and the Caribbean, all financed with private domestic and foreign capital. The DR now has more than 70,000 hotel rooms, two and a half times as many as Jamaica.

While Jamaica’s stopover tourist arrivals have quadrupled since 1990, the DR has seen a sixteenfold increase. Yet, it did not have its own airline and its government did not focus its attention on building monuments to tourism like the Montego Bay Convention Centre. Instead, the DR concentrated its efforts on designing economic policies, tax incentives and institutional support mechanisms to spur private foreign and domestic investments in the development of the industry

 

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