First, the Multi-Fibre Agreement of international textile quotas expired at the beginning of the year, exposing the industry to the full force of cheaper labour competition from Asian countries such as China.
Second, the industry continued to suffer a long-running secular trend. To maintain the business of US fashion manufacturers,
“It’s very important for me,” she says. “I pay for the kids, I pay for the telephone and the light and the water and the cellphone and collective buses and food with it. Everything. It pays for us completely.”
Julio does not enjoy living in the US, she says, and
“Confidence in the daily operations of the bank survived because of the way the business elite has covered the deficit with their own resources,” President Fernández told the FT.
Even so Banco del Progreso’s difficulties have been an uncomfortable reminder of the crisis in 2003 at Baninter, then the country’s
Eleven years later, he is still eking out a living on the same batey, or labour encampment, where he arrived, with no money, nine fingers, and a foot-long vertical gash on his chest that has been sewn up like a mailbag.
“Can you help me get a cédula?” he asks,
Gaetan Bucher, a Swiss-Dominican private banker developing the project, is in no doubt about what he is taking on. “Talk about taking on a challenge,” he says. He plans to house a complex built at a cost of more than $600m on a 17 sq km greenfield site at