The hotel and restaurant industry in the D.R. registered a 9.2 % growth rate

The Central Bank, in the interest of keeping economic agents and the general public duly informed, and as part of the institutional commitment to transparency and timely disclosure of data under its responsibility, reports the preliminary results of economic activity as of May 2024.

Hotels, bars and restaurants exhibited a cumulative interannual variation of 9.2 % in the January-May 2024 period. This remarkable dynamism was largely supported by the arrival of 3,716,262 tourists by air during the first five months of the year and 1,284,635 excursionists for a total of 5,000,897 visitors in January-May 2024. Likewise, the consolidated loan portfolio for the sector increased by 27.6% compared to May 2023.

Construction, which has a significant multiplying and dragging effect on other economic sectors, showed a year-on-year growth of 4.4 % in January-May 2024. It is expected that this activity will experience a higher performance in the coming months as the impact on the expectations of the content of the reforms that could be implemented this year clears.

On the other hand, local manufacturing registered an average year-on-year increase of 2.7% during the first five months of 2024, mainly supported by the performance of other food products and base metal manufacturing. Likewise, the 5.8 % year-on-year expansion in the real value added of free zone manufacturing is largely explained by exports amounting to US$3,469.0 million in January-May 2024.

Agricultural activity showed an inter-annual growth of 4.0 % in January-May of this year, with increases in the production of rice, banana, avocado, chicken, eggs, among others, in which the technical and financial support to agricultural producers at the national level provided by the Government through the Ministry of Agriculture has had an important impact.

Finally, all economic activities recorded a positive performance in January-May 2024 with the exception of Mining, whose 16.5% drop is mainly explained by the temporary cessation of operations of the ferronickel extraction company as of December 2023, as well as the slowdown in the gold extraction process, due to the plan to readjust the facilities required for the continuity of mining activity in the country’s main deposit.