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The World Bank is committed to continuing to provide technical and financial support so that the country can continue to promote reforms and projects for the benefit of its citizens.
The Director of the General Directorate of Budget (Digepres)José Rijo Presbot held a meeting with Gabriel Zaourak, Senior Economic Policy Economist at the World Bank (WB), with the purpose of discussing aspects of budgetary support to the Dominican Government and possible policies to continue improving resilience and transparency in economic matters in the country.
During the meeting, the budget director was accompanied by Odilys Hidalgo, director of Budgetary Services; Rafael Jovine, director of Economic Studies and Financial Monitoring; Ana Miguelina Terrero, in charge of Budgetary Performance Evaluation; while Zaourak was accompanied virtually by Anna-Maria Bogdanova, senior specialist in Disaster Risk Management; Victoria Alexeeva, specialist in Disaster Risk Management; María Alejandra Scheker Lora, specialist in Acquisitions; Jean Michel Lobet, Senior Specialist in Finance, Competition and Investment and Carmen Amaro, Operations Officer.
The opening remarks of the meeting were delivered by the Budget Director, José Rijo Presbot, who thanked the local and international attendees for their participation, while highlighting the Government's efforts to achieve greater economic performance from State institutions in order to promote poverty reduction and create a fairer and more equitable society.
During his presentation, Rijo Presbot highlighted aspects of the transformations being made to the Financial Management Information System (SIGEF), which will introduce a new management model starting in 2026 regarding the projection, concept, and functionality of the Budget, the actions under the Results-Based Budgeting (RBB) strategy in public management and its connection to the allocation of resources to goods and services and their measurement, and in terms of legislation, he addressed the Organic Budget Law No. 423-06.
“In terms of legislation, we are working on the draft amendment to the Organic Budget Law, to adapt it to the 2010 Constitution, the National Development Strategy and the Fiscal Responsibility Law, the latter with an impact in terms of laws, indebtedness and limits under a fiscal rule“,” José Rijo Presbot emphasized during his presentation.
For his part, Rafael Jovine, Director of Economic Studies and Financial Monitoring, focused his speech on areas of the General State Budget and the country's results obtained under the Open Government format in public management, based on access to information, citizen participation and collaboration, and accountability. This has allowed the country to rank fourth worldwide out of 125 countries and first among Latin American and Caribbean countries in terms of transparency, according to data from the Dominican Republic Open Budget Survey by the International Budget Partnership. (IBP).
Ana Miguelina Terrero based her intervention on the evaluation of budgetary programs, measurement of the efficiency of public spending and contributions to the gender perspective and the most vulnerable sectors, in the same way, she explained the actions that are being developed on the Government's public financing to face and promote climate action and gender equality in the country.
Proposals for a citizen-centered administration
In the meeting with representatives of the World Bank, the Budget Director, José Rijo Presbot, also expressed President Luis Abinader's interest in continuing to work so that the public sector registers extraordinary and structural changes in education, health, security and the fight against corruption, which includes a functional classification and goals that seek to improve the quality of life of the people.
Finally, Gabriel Zaourak, Senior Economic Policy Economist at the World Bank, after reviewing the data and information provided by the Budget team, expressed the World Bank's interest in further strengthening ties with the Budget Office in the future to provide technical and financial support so that the Dominican Republic can continue to promote reforms and projects for the benefit of its citizens. The exchange between the two entities took place in the Digepres office.
