Documented examples

The move, and what it needed

The Presidency, and since Decreto 114-25 the housing ministry, ran a national trust that certifies private housing projects and pays each buyer's down payment, sales tax and seven years of mortgage-rate relief, so private developers and banks build and finance low-cost homes that the state does not build itself.

Preconditions

• Law 189-11 on mortgage development and trusts, which lets each project sit in a certified autonomous trust that protects buyers
• A banking sector willing to lend long-term mortgages to lower-income buyers once the state covers the down payment and part of the rate
• Domestic developers able to build several thousand units across provinces

Where else it has been used: A version of Mexico's and Brazil's developer-led subsidised housing models (Minha Casa Minha Vida), run at much smaller scale and paused after a change of ministry.

The move, and what it needed

The Dominican state, employers and unions run INFOTEP jointly under Law 116-80, financed by an employer payroll contribution, and since 2020 the institute expanded its own centres and virtual offer to push enrolment past one million a year.

Preconditions

• A compulsory employer training levy that gives the institute a revenue base independent of the annual budget contest
• Tripartite governance that keeps employers invested in the course offer
• A dense network of own and partner training centres, plus a virtual platform, to reach provinces outside Santo Domingo

Where else it has been used: INFOTEP belongs to the Latin American levy-funded training family with SENAI and SENA; El Salvador dissolved its counterpart, INSAFORP, in 2023, so the same model travelled and was then unwound next door.

The move, and what it needed

The Dominican Republic joined police, health, fire and public-works responders behind one emergency number and expanded the dispatch network province by province. A common protocol and radio system let separate agencies act on the same incident instead of asking residents to coordinate them themselves.

Preconditions

• A national dispatch centre with authority to route incidents across police, health, fire and transport agencies
• Interoperable communications, location data and response protocols that work across provinces
• A financing and expansion plan that adds ambulances, staff and local coverage as the service footprint grows

Where else it has been used: Emergency systems travel when a single public interface is backed by interoperable responders and a measured expansion path; the phone number alone is not the capability.

The move, and what it needed

The social policy cabinet (GCPS) chaired by the Vice-Presidency raised the transfer for 811,003 households already on PROSOLI and added new households classified as poor or vulnerable in SIUBEN, while ADESS partnered with banks and card networks and signed on more than 2,000 new retailers to pay them.

Preconditions

• A proxy-means social registry (SIUBEN) with recent survey data to target new households without new fieldwork
• A working electronic payment administrator (ADESS) and a retailer network that could be extended
• Emergency fiscal room

Where else it has been used: Most Latin American governments scaled transfers through their social registries in 2020; the countries with registries covering a larger share of the population needed fewer on-demand fixes.

The move, and what it needed

The government declared a generation emergency by decree, had CDEEE tender a 2-unit coal plant as a single EPC contract with a foreign consortium, and financed milestone payments from the budget and export credit; when payments and works fell behind, it settled the disputes in 2020 at a higher value and later placed the plant in a public trust run by Banreservas' fiduciary.

Preconditions

• An emergency decree that let one state company run the procurement outside normal planning
• A single EPC contractor carrying design and construction risk, with milestone pricing open to dispute
• An external audit body able to publish a final cost, which here came only years after commissioning

Where else it has been used: Large single-contractor energy builds tendered under emergency powers show the same sequence elsewhere in the region: a fixed headline price at award, delays tied to payment disputes, and a settlement that resets the price before any audit.