Newly-elected Dominican President Leonel Fernandez said Monday that his government will deal with pressing economic issues facing the island country in West Indies,according to reports from Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic.

"The key (to solving the crisis) is growth with stability and low inflation," Fernandez told a news conference after winning Sunday's presidential election in the first round with more than 56 percent of the votes.

The former leader of the Dominican Republic (1996-2000) said that the challenge facing the new government was to regain people's trust and thus pave the way for the recovery of 3 billion US dollars "that left our economy in the last two years."

If capital returns and foreign investment is boosted, the country will be better positioned to revalue the Dominican peso, which will in turn reduce inflation and improve the people's buying capacity, Fernandez said.

Fernandez, chief of the Dominican Liberation Party, will rule in the future four years a country that has been immersed in severe economic crisis and plagued by high inflation and rapid depreciation of the peso for years.

The country's inflation stood at 42.6 percent in 2003 and at 24.3 in the first quarter of this year. The dollar, at 17 Dominican pesos in January 2000, is currently worth 45, against a record high of 55 pesos.

Source: Xinhua