Above: the National Palace in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (Photo: DICOM)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

The Dominican Republic’s government is looking to foster a “culture of entrepreneurship and job creation,” according to President Danilo Medina.

On Monday, the country launched a new Strategy for Fostering Entrepreneurship, emphasizing what it called a need for the country to move beyond a model of subsistence and informal microenterprise.

Ingrid Santamaria Figueroa, executive director of the Dominican Republics’s Regional Centre for the Promotion of Micro and Small Enterprises, said the strategy aligned with wider national push to promote entrepreneurship by both public and private universities.

Jose del Castillo, the Dominican Republic’s Minister of Trade and Industry, said the strategy would transcend subsistence and informal work, which he said does “not offer opportunities for economic growth.”

The plan falls under the larger SICA-EMPRENDE initiative, forged in partnership with the Central American Integration System, aiming to “build an ecosystem of entrepreneurs in the Dominican Republic,” across industries like finance and institutional coordination.