Strengthening The Foundations

What is Grupo Sención’s mission and its current objectives?

We are a Dominican family business committed to providing innovative and quality services and contributing to the social, economic, and environmental development of the Dominican Republic across different industries. We are now in a phase of uniting all our operations. For that, we have been working with several international consultants and created a family council and protocol in 2016. At the same time, we are in the process of professionalizing our companies and are working on executing the best corporate government practices for all companies and the group in general. Simultaneously, we have worked on the issue of group image because the companies are currently individual, though we intend to turn them into a holding company.

You have built the largest convention center in the country. What is the significance of this and what other important projects are you considering?

The convention center has a great deal of relevance since there was no center with that kind of capacity in the capital of Santo Domingo (approximately 4,000 people). It was meant to house the 46th OAS convention; therefore, we built it in a record five months, which was the result of a terrific and engaging team of engineers working day and night to achieve this. With this construction Constructora Global has set a higher standard to guarantee the quality and efficiency of Dominican constructors.

What are your additional key projects for 2017?

We have a construction service company called Antillean Construction. It is in charge of the construction of the road infrastructure of the city of Juan Bosch, which is a government project. This has the peculiar feature of having 25,000 housing units under development for an estimated 100,000 inhabitants, while occupying a land area of 3 million sqm. Our company is in charge of the road infrastructure and we completed Phase I in late 2016. We just started Phase II and will be working on that over 2017. We are looking for developing projects of private-public partnership (PPP) because we understand that is necessary for this country to continuing the development of infrastructures. In the Constructora Global sector, which is real estate development, we intend to build approximately 2,000 housing units in the next few years. We already have projects designed in the eastern zone, in an expanding area called San Isidro, and there we will develop approximately 1,400 units. Then, we have a residential tower on Avenida Nuñez Cáceres at a slightly higher level called “Panorama 310.”

What is your vision with this redefinition of the company in the next five years?

We have the vision and are working on creating a holding company and a solid corporate structure. Now in each of the companies we see many opportunities. We plan to build 2,000 housing units and expand to 10 stations per year. In Macrotech, we will continue to expand the programs we have locally while also internationalizing. As for renewable energy, we created the Sunergy Company and have a portfolio of projects worth USD70 million that we intend to develop in the next four years. Even at our fuel stations, we are setting up solar plants, both for economic and environmental reasons. Many institutions submitted a request to change the law, which allows banks to accept collateral to be able to finance 80% of solar installations. As of today, it only recognizes 30%, which limits the financing capacity of such projects. We are at the point where if approved, there will be a renewable energy boom in the Dominican Republic whose wave we will ride. We also see the possibility of moving into other markets. We have been in talks, for example, with friends from Colombia on renewable energy there, which is still in an exploration phase, but we see something interesting there.