Dominican Republic
GDP per capita to 2060, by scenario
Constant-rate scenario path; the 2060 endpoint levels are illustrative, not forecasts.
Factor profile
They earn from what cannot be sent down a wire: visitors who come, and workers abroad who send money home.
How this economy meets AI
Today’s production, workforce and automation baseline — context for the scenarios, outside the AGI Growth Index.
Where output comes from (% of GDP)
Where people work (% of employment)
Informal employment
Current automation exposure
Several parts of the economy could transmit AI’s effects. The pace depends on adoption by firms, connectivity and movement of workers between sectors.
Sources: World Bank WDI; ILOSTAT; Global Automation Atlas (Garg, Crosta & Baier, 2026). The latest available year is shown for each measure; vintages differ, so shares may not sum to 100.
Where the Dominican Republic starts
The Dominican Republic enters the AGI era as a reform climber: a country growing steadily from a modest base while its institutions improve. Ten-year trend growth of 4.8% a year is among the fastest in Latin America. At about $11,059 per person, it is upper-middle-income. The scores explain the climb. Physical build speed is 4.5 out of 5, seen in the tourism corridors around Punta Cana, the free-trade zones for medical devices and textiles, and the DP World Caucedo port. AI diffusion is 3.9 and language inclusion 3.9, so new tools spread fast. Two constraints bind. Compute and energy access scores 1.1: the country hosts almost no data center capacity, and its power grid is strained. Catch-up headroom, at 2.6, is thinner than most climbers, because much of the easy growth is already banked.
The three paths
These are simulations, not forecasts. The Modest path is the baseline, and the two AGI scenarios fork from it. Under the Modest scenario, AI stays a normal technology. The Dominican Republic would hold near its strong trend at 5% growth a year, 25th of 157 — a high rank because its momentum is real even without AGI. At that pace the economy doubles in about 14 years. Under Gradual takeoff, growth would climb over two decades and reach 10.6% a year once AGI matures around 2045, ranking 47th; the economy would then double in under seven years. The long runway rewards the country's momentum and its capacity to absorb new tools. Under Fast takeoff, growth would arrive from the early 2030s and reach 13.3% a year, a doubling every five to six years. Yet its rank would slip to 55th, down eight places, because a fast world rewards the compute and geopolitical access the country lacks. Regulation and politics could slow or redirect any path, depending on how Dominicans and their leaders respond to transformative AI — a variable the model holds constant.
How you would know which world you are in
The three scenarios look almost identical until about 2030. Watch leading indicators, not GDP, and check them live rather than trust any snapshot. Three global signals matter most. First, whether the METR task horizon curve keeps doubling every four to five months through 2027–28; METR publishes it at metr.org. Second, whether frontier lab revenue and capital spending keep compounding; Epoch AI tracks both at epoch.ai. Third, whether growth in the ten to twenty most-ready economies — the United States and China above all — breaks above trend in the early 2030s. Double-digit growth there within a couple of years of 2030 would point to a fast world; a point or two above trend by the mid-2030s to a gradual one; a fade back to trend to a modest one. The Dominican Republic's own signals would arrive sooner: hyperscaler hosting commitments on Dominican soil, the order books of the free-zone plants and Caucedo's container volumes, and whether nearshoring contracts keep landing or start to thin.
If growth goes explosive
Explosive is relative. At 13.3% growth a year under Fast takeoff, the Dominican Republic would run well ahead of its region, whose median would be about 9.2%. But it would fall far behind the frontier, where the United States would compound near 39% a year and pull away. Measured against its own history, the change would be dramatic. The economy would double every five to six years, so a child starting school would finish it in a country several times richer. Free zones and tourism would still anchor the economy, and higher wages at home would ease the pressure to emigrate to the United States. There is an honest downside. The country's compute would be rented, not owned, and financed from abroad; data centers controlled elsewhere can be throttled or repriced by decisions made in Washington or in a hyperscaler's boardroom. The hedge is to bargain for ownership stakes and firm capacity, not just to host. Even then, the pace-setter would move to the state, testing whether the electricity distributors, the energy regulator and the permitting offices can supply power and approvals fast enough.
What the Dominican Republic can do now
Three levers follow from the weakest high-weight scores, and two pay off whether or not AGI arrives. The first no-regret lever is climate and environmental resilience, low at 2.1. Flood defense, water security and cooling protect tourism and farming under every scenario, and water and cooling are the same inputs any data center build would need. The second no-regret lever is geopolitical positioning, at 2. Keeping access to capital markets, avoiding sanctions exposure and deepening trusted-partner ties with chip-supplying blocs pays off today and matters more if AI transforms the economy. A cautious government can act on both now and lose nothing. The third lever is the bet: compute and energy access, at 1.1 and carrying the most weight of all. It barely moves growth in a modest world, but under fast takeoff it becomes the single biggest lever. Closing it means fixing the strained grid and packaging power, land and fast permits for investors, while protecting the build-speed and diffusion strengths already in place. Senegal built a national data center at Diamniadio with partner finance; the Dominican Republic could adapt that model. Open the atlas's policy editor to test how moving these scores reshapes each path.
Use the policy editor to test how different factor scores change Dominican Republic’s modeled path. The roadmap builder below can then incorporate those targets into a 1,000-day planning prompt.
Drafted with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, from the atlas’s data and an editorial template set by the author.
Create a 1000-day AGI and growth roadmap prompt
This prompt can be used with Claude, ChatGPT or an open-weight model hosted on your institution’s systems. It includes the atlas material for Dominican Republic: the country brief, economic structure, region, archetype and global scenarios. It instructs the model to ask for local information, use existing strategies and the political calendar, and preserve the atlas’s interpretation rules. The prompt is assembled in your browser; the information entered here is not sent elsewhere.
1 · Read the brief → 2 · Set targets in the policy editor → 3 · Generate and copy the prompt → 4 · Run it with an approved model, with high reasoning effort and web access where permitted
Instructions are generated in the selected language; the data annex remains in English. Translations are machine-drafted, and corrections from native speakers are welcome through the contact links on the start page.