Subsidies in the Dominican Republic increase from RD$3,700MM to RD$12,000MM per quarter in five years

In 2020, before the world was paralyzed by the pandemic, the State maintained a network of social programs that reached about 2.3 million people and cost RD$3,717 million per quarter Five years later, the magnitude of the expenditure and the number of beneficiaries have grown at an unprecedented rate. According to data from the Social Subsidy Administrator (ADESS), in the second quarter of 2025, RD$12.147 billion was disbursed for a payroll of 3,638,329 beneficiaries. This represents a 226% increase in spending and 1.3 million additional people on the register. The expansion is partly explained by the transition from Progresando con Solidaridad (PROSOLI) to Supérate in 2021, with new programs such as Supérate Mujer, Fondo Discapacidad, Bono Madre and Agricultura Familiar Valle Nuevo. However, the three main subsidies continue to be those that concentrate the majority of the resources:

• Feed Yourself before Eating is First: from 852,622 households in 2020 to 1,489,960 in 2025 for an increase of more than 70%
• BonoGas Hogar: from 917,522 to 1,312,230 households, an increase of 43%
• BonoLuz: from 437,821 to 545,992 households for an addition of more than 24.7%

In the second quarter of 2025, Aliméntate absorbed 60.23% of the total disbursed by ADESS, with RD$7,316 million in just three months. For Leidy Blanco, coordinator of Citizen Participation, the central question is whether this increase translates into a real reduction in poverty. "In five years, the registry has grown by 56%, and while the economy grows and poverty levels remain stable, it is not understood how there are such large increases in the number of beneficiaries," she warns. Blanco also warned about the risks of maintaining a system that expands without debugging: “It is not perpetuating poverty that we want, it is to get out of it with mechanisms that allow the citizen to generate their own capacities.”