Banking
The official monetary unit is the Dominican peso divided into
100 centavos. Minted in 1947, it maintains a floating exchange
rate with the U.S. dollar and other international currencies.
Around (RD$15.50 &$61 US$1)(December 1998).
Exchange houses and commercial banks are authorized to trade
with foreign currencies. The banking system is governed by
the country’s Central Bank, which is controlled by the
Monetary Board and supervised by the Superintendency of Banks.
The Central Bank regulates the country’s credit, money
supply and the official foreign exchange rate. Private banking
is conducted by 14 commercial banks including major international
institutions such as Scotiabank and Citibank. The Stock Market
of Santo Domingo is a definite option for business development.
Communications
The Dominican Republic is probably the Latin American nation
with the most advanced telecommunications system. The principal
companies, Codetel, Tricomy All America Cables and Radio carry
out efforts to stay at the vanguard of technological developments
and continuously implement aggressive marketing programs to
introduce new products and services to the Dominican market.
As a result, the nation enjoys the latest in cellular mobile
phones, beepers, facsimile, national paging services, telenet,
email, 800 lines, prepaid calling cards, residential and commercial
telephone systems, data transmission, wireless Internet, videoconferencing,
electronic commerce, webTV, and other state of the art technologies.
It is expected that the digital cellular telephone segment
will be one of the fastest developing in telephone communication
within the next years.
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