Spanish
The Central Bank of the Dominican Republic (BCRD) reported that the growth of the financial sector, based on the international guidelines of the System of National Accounts, shows an expansion of 7.3% of the real added value of the activity for the period January-November 2025.
The data was highlighted in the analysis document titled "Methodological Clarifications on the Estimation of the Value Added of the Financial Sector and Dominican Economic Growth", which makes technical clarifications on the methodology for measuring the economic activity of financial intermediation, insurance and related activities and its contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP).
The entity explains that this methodology is based on the best international practices applicable to the elaboration of macroeconomic statistics.
In that vein, "national accounts are prepared by applying the guidelines of the 2008 System of National Accounts (SNA 2008), an international methodological framework developed jointly by the United Nations (UN), the European Commission, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB)".
Furthermore, "these estimates are based on exhaustive research at the level of public and private companies, censuses, surveys, administrative records, production and price statistics, as well as the financial statements of the different economic units, and constitute the fundamental basis on which the different components of the national accounts system are structured, as is the case of the macroeconomic aggregates of quarterly GDP and the monthly economic activity indicator (IMAE)".
The BCRD indicates that "financial intermediation services are estimated from the income received by financial intermediaries, through explicit and implicit commissions. Explicit ones include income from credit card commissions, account management, late fees, returned checks, credit card withdrawals, among other charges and income generated by these entities."
Similarly, it indicates that "within the framework of the 2008 SNA, implicit commissions, called Financial Intermediation Services Indirectly Measured (FISIM), are also incorporated into the production of the financial sector, which are generated by imputing a commission for indirect services to all loans and deposits offered by a financial institution."
The document states that "the SIFMI are estimated by summing two components: the SIFMI of loans, which is the result of the difference between the interest charged to the debtor and the interest obtained from multiplying the relevant reference rate by the average stock of loans; and the SIFMI of deposits, defined by the difference between the interest obtained from multiplying the reference rate by the average stock of deposits and the interest paid to depositors."
Regarding the above, the BCRD considers that "in short, financial services such as risk management, fund administration and transaction facilitation, are measured indirectly because they do not have an explicit price. Their cost is implicit in the difference between lending and deposit interest rates, and their value is estimated by calculations based on interest margins using a reference rate."
The Open Page document emphasizes that: “as indicated by the 2008 SNA, the imputation of FISIM in production is necessary to reflect the economic reality of the financial sector, not simply an accounting adjustment. To this end, it is evident that without the estimates of FISIM we would be assuming an underestimation of the financial sector's production and, therefore, we would not be making an estimate in line with the standards of the best current international practices”.
The BCRD points out that "the 7.3% expansion recorded for the January-November 2025 period by the financial intermediation, insurance and related activities sector strictly responds to the methodological precision of the national accounts, which use specific and differentiated price indices for each subsector and month, capturing with greater fidelity the cost structure of financial intermediation." The document states that "if an approximate estimate were to be made using the average year-on-year variation of the consumer price index (CPI) for the period January-November 2025 (3.77%) as a deflator, the result obtained would be 8.0%. The gap between both figures is explained by the use of the aforementioned differentiated price indices, as illustrated in the table presented in the following section of this document." Open Page addresses explanatory issues of gross operating surplus and concludes that "the growth rate of the value added of financial services, as can happen with other economic sectors, does not have to be perfectly aligned with the performance of the macroeconomic aggregate as a whole represented by GDP". The BCRD concludes by reiterating "its institutional commitment to continue compiling and publishing statistics as accurate and detailed as possible, seeking to strengthen the statistical system as an effective instrument for analysis and decision-making."
