A luncheon meeting scheduled for 2pm on Sunday between President Leonel Fernandez and key tourist sector investors and business people is expected to discuss the future plans for development of the east coast area of the country including new investment. The meeting is being held at the Bávaro hotel complex in La Altagracia province.

Also expected to attend are Tourism Minister Félix Jiménez, Presidency Administrative Secretary Luis Manuel Bonetti and Industry and Commerce Secretary Francisco Javier Garcia, among other officials.

Santiago will see an injection of RD$5.75 billion to fund projects such as road reconstruction, schools, avenues, bridges and water systems. The announcement was made by President Leonel Fernandez during a meeting with the government cabinet in the city on Friday.

Specific projects include reconstruction of the Juncalito-Pedregal and Las Placetas-Los Montones routes and the completion of the Hispanoamericana Avenue, completion of the Juncalito and San José de las Matas water supply systems and a traffic distribution system for the Cibao airport.

In advance of the Serie del Caribe, the Caribbean Series Baseball Tournament, the Cibao Stadium will be remodelled. Other refurbishment projects include the Centro de la Cultura, the Ateneo Amantes de la Luz, and the Gran Teatro del Cibao.

The government agency promoting and supporting small and medium-sized businesses, PROMIPYME, will also invest RD$150 million in the area to help alleviate the unemployment problem caused by recent Free Trade Zone layoffs in the province.

The Dominican junior men's tennis team has advanced to the International Tennis Federations's Junior Davis Cup Finals to be held in El Salvador today.

The team, consisting of 16 year olds Luis Eduardo Delgado, Oscar Dominguez and Eduardo Pou and captained by Marcial Mota, has not lost a single match as it advanced to the finals. On Tuesday the Dominican team beat Costa Rica 3-0, on Wednesday they beat Panama 3-0 and in the semi-final they beat out Barbados 2-1 and then beat the Jamaican team 3-0 to proceed into the finals.

Today they face Guatemala with the winners going on to represent Cental America and the Caribbean in the regional finals in Canada.

The Artibonito River's hydrographic basin, located between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, will undergo a rehabilitation project at a cost of Can$10 million.

The binational project initiated by the Environment Ministry (Semarena) has the support of the Canadian Embassy and is intended to integrate the management of the basin, recover degraded areas, preserve its ecology and relieve the poverty in the area. The Artibonito basin has approximately 23,000 inhabitants and takes in an area from Elias Piña and Dajabón provinces before it joins the Massacre River near the Atlantic Ocean.

Semarena will conduct tours, run workshops and gather further information in order to draft a preliminary report.