Why Dominican Rep's Ámbar highway is stirring up controversy

The Dominican Republic started in May the search for a builder and operator of the 21.5bn-peso (US$391mn) Ámbar divided highway, which will connect Santiago de los Caballeros and Puerto Plata on the north coast. 

The decision prompted protests from environmental groups like the Cibao ecology society Soeci and Fundetrop, who claim the works would harm the ecosystems of the mountainous area. The 32.7km project would cross the northern mountain range, linking the areas known as the Mediterranean metropolis and the Novia del Atlántico coastline in approximately 30 minutes.

“The Ámbar highway is not currently a national or a regional priority, hence we believe the government should not start the construction, which will be extremely expensive and will damage many ecosystems. It will affect forests and rivers,” said Luis Polanco, executive director of Soeci, according to news outlet Acento. 

The representative of Fundetrop, Nelson Estrella, said in the same report that the project only seeks to benefit the industrial sector, and suggested consideration of other projects like cable cars in Santiago and Puerto Plata.

On the other hand, transportation association Asotrado and the association of traders and industrialists of Santiago (Acis) have expressed their support for the highway. 

Acis president Sandy Filpo said during a press conference on Monday that the project has complied with the environmental impact studies and soil surveys.

“This project is about to materialize and some ecological groups, without full awareness, have started saying there are no environmental impact studies, and we must highlight that this project already has a US$7mn investment in that aspect,” Filpo said.

According to documents provided by the government’s PPP agency DGAPP, the highway is an initiative of APP Quisqueya SRL, a local company specialized in PPP infrastructure projects, and was delivered to DGAPP in November 2020. The proposal received the green light for construction in April 2021. 

The aim is to solve “the current deficiency of infrastructure between the provinces Santiago de los Caballeros and Puerto Plata,” say the documents, as the current highways linking the localities – Santiago-Navarrete-Puerto Plata and Gregorio Luperón, known as the Tourism Route – were built between five and eight decades ago and are deemed unsafe. 

“Is essential to us that Dominican companies, who have proved their capabilities for this type of project, participate in the process which we can assure will be a PPP model that will erase previous bad experiences when we didn’t have law 47-20 – which guarantees the efficient risk distribution and adequate benefit distribution,” said the general director of DGAPP, Sigmund Freund, in a press conference in May.

The agency is also promoting the project in Spain and South Korea, as two tenders on procurement platform Comprasdominicana show.