Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

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Glossary
zones, these industrial parks play host to manufacturing
firms that benefit from favorable business conditions
extended by a given government in an effort to attract foreign
investment and to create jobs. In the Dominican
Republic, free-zone enterprises pay no duties on goods
directly imported into, or exported from, the free zone.
These enterprises also enjoy exemptions from Dominican
taxes for up to twenty years, and they are allowed to pay
workers less than the established minimum wage.
International Development Association (IDA)—EWorld
Bank.
International Finance Corporation (IFC)
See World Bank.
International Monetary Fund (IMF)—Established along with
the World Bank (q.v.) in 1945, the IMF is a specialized
agency affiliated with the United Nations; it is responsible
for stabilizing international exchange rates and payments.
The main business of the IMF is the provision of loans to
its members (including industrialized and developing
countries) when they experience balance-of-payments difficulties.
These loans frequently carry conditions that
require substantial internal economic adjustments by the
recipients, most of which are developing countries.
latifundio—A piece of landed property, usually a great landed
estate with primitive agriculture and labor, often in a state
of partial servitude.
Lome Convention—A series of agreements between the European
Economic Community (EEC, subsequently the European
Union—EU) and a group of African, Caribbean, and
Pacific (ACP) states, mainly former European colonies,
that provide duty-free or preferential access to the EEC
market for almost all ACP exports. The Stabilization of
Export Earnings (Stabex) scheme, a mechanism set up by
the Lome Convention, provides for compensation for ACP
export earnings lost through fluctuations in the world
prices of agricultural commodities. The Lome Convention
also provides for limited EEC development aid and investment
funds to be disbursed to ACP recipients through the
European Development Fund and the European Investment
Bank. The Lome Convention has been updated
every five years since Lome I took effect on April 1, 1976.
Lome IV, which included the Dominican Republic and
Haiti for the first time, entered into force in 1990 and was
to cover the ten-year period 1990-99.
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