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Dominican Republic Informal Sector
Many Dominicans escaped formal government data
collection,
but nonetheless played a major economic role, particularly
in the
urban economy. Estimates of the size of the informal urban
economy in the late 1980s ranged from 20 percent to 50
percent of
the total urban labor force. Workers in the informal
sector
included self-employed people, unpaid family workers,
domestic
servants, and very small businesses or "microenterprises"
of only
a few workers in manufacturing and assorted services.
Although
little reliable data existed on the country's informal
sector,
many in that sector received economic assistance from the
United
States Agency for International Development (AID), the
InterAmerican Foundation, and other development agencies to
promote
their expansion into the formal sector. Some observers
believed
that the growth of the informal sector was a response to
the
complex legal framework for business, restrictive
exchange-rate
controls, widespread informal financial markets, pricing
and tax
policies, and the often-cited Dominican preference for
highly
personal relations.
Data as of December 1989
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