ABOVE: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

The island nation of the Dominican Republic is set to host the Panama Diamond Exchange’s first Caribbean roadshow, which will visit its capital city, Santo Domingo, from September 7 to 9.

The sixth PDE roadshow will be the first to a key economy in the Caribbean Basin, which is an area that not only is home to an increasingly important domestic market, but also is a region that brings in millions of tourists each year by air and by sea.

The visit is part of the World Jewelry Hub’s two-pronged outreach program in Latin America, which includes periodic diamond and jewelry weeks that bring buyers to the World Jewelry Hub in Panama City, as well roadshows taking PDE members directly into the region’s most important jewelry markets. Previous roadshows have visited Lima, Peru; Bogotá, Colombia; Guayaquil, Ecuador; Santiago, Chile; and São Paulo, Brazil.

The Dominican Republic roadshow is being led by Judy Meana, Vice President of the Panama Diamond Exchange, and Ali Pastorini, Director of Marketing of the World Jewelry Hub and the personal representative of the WJH Chairman, Eli Izhakoff.

A B2B networking event will take place during the morning of September 8 at the Sheraton Hotel Santo Domingo. Featuring a presentation by Ms. Meana about the World Jewelry Hub and its development program, the event will provide the opportunity for delegation members and key jewelers from the Dominican Republic to meet and schedule one-on-one meetings.

With Latin America’s ninth largest GDP and the largest in the Caribbean and Central American region, the Dominican Republic has one of the world’s fastest expanding economies, with growth averaging around 5.5 percent annually between 1991 and 2013. The country registers 5 million tourist arrivals each year, far outpacing all other islands in the Caribbean.

The country is a jewelry exporter in it own right, serving as a production center for many U.S. jewelry companies. It also is Latin America’s sixth largest gold producer and the 20th largest globally, with an estimated 40 million ounces of gold reserves. It additionally is a rich source of amber, and is the world’s only known producer of Larimar, a rare gemstone that also is known as Atlantis Stone, which has an extraordinary blue color similar to that of the tropical sea.

“The Dominican Republic is a lynchpin in a region that critical in Latin America,” explained Ms. Meana. “It not only is the gateway to the Caribbean, but also a lucrative jewelry market serving million of tourists from the United States and around the world. We consider this to be a most important stop in PDE’s outreach program.”