With four positions held in six years within the Abinader government, Santos arrives at a CUED that inherits a loss reduction plan already in place and a warning of his own: the problem is structural and cannot be solved with a single measure
SANTO DOMINGO. – President Luis Abinader appointed Joel Adrián Santos Echavarría as president of the Unified Council of Electricity Distribution Companies (CUED) and coordinator of the Energy Cabinet, through Decree No. 556-26, issued on the night of August 16.
The appointment is part of a broad cabinet reshuffle that also included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Housing, the National Institute of Transit and Land Transportation (INTRANT), the Dominican Port Authority, and other state agencies.
Santos replaces Celso Marranzini, who had chaired the CUED since December 2023 and is currently without assigned duties. The decree revokes Marranzini's appointment contained in Decree No. 667-23, dated December 29, 2023, as well as Article 2 of Decree No. 444-24, dated August 15, 2024, by which Santos himself had been appointed Minister of Energy and Mines. The presidential decree does not name a replacement for that position, which remains vacant.
Professional career
Santos, born in Santo Domingo on July 17, 1969, is an economist who graduated magna cum laude from the Pontifical Catholic University Madre y Maestra (PUCMM) and holds an MBA in International Business from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona, which he obtained as a Fulbright scholar. He served for a decade as a professor of Economics and Finance at PUCMM, including the graduate program in Corporate Finance.
Before joining the government, he built a career of more than three decades in the private sector, with executive positions in financial institutions such as Citibank and Grupo BHD, in addition to experience in telecommunications.
In the tourism sector, he was executive vice president and founding partner of Coral Hospitality Corp., a company dedicated to the management of hotels and properties in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Jamaica. He also presided over business associations such as the National Association of Young Entrepreneurs (ANJE) and the National Association of Hotels and Restaurants (Asonahores).
Political and Government Career
Santos participated in drafting the Modern Revolutionary Party's (PRM) government plan and, during the 2020 presidential campaign, coordinated the assessment of the tourism sector's needs. With his appointment to CUED, he now holds four positions within the Abinader administration.
He joined the government in August 2020 as general manager of AFP Reservas and honorary advisor to the Executive Branch on tourism matters. In July 2022, he assumed the interim position of Minister of the Presidency, a post that was ratified in August of that year by Decree No. 481-22. From this position, he coordinated inter-institutional working groups and initiatives such as the development of Pedernales-Cabo Rojo and Manzanillo Bay, the Integrated Transportation System, the National Land Titling Plan, and the Happy Family National Housing Plan.
In August 2024 he moved to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, where he remained until the reorganization of August 16, 2026, which transferred him to the presidency of CUED and the coordination of the Energy Cabinet.
The electrical system, according to CUED itself
The agency now headed by Santos acknowledged in its March 2026 institutional review that losses in the distribution system stem from a structural problem. "In no electrical system in the world are losses reduced immediately or by a single measure. It is a structural problem that combines technical, commercial, and cultural variables, and its correction requires sustained investment, operational discipline, and ongoing monitoring," CUED stated in that report.
According to the agency's own data, during 2025, 65 substations were worked on in different phases of construction, repowering or adaptation, 1,163 kilometers of maintenance were carried out on distribution lines and 1,935 kilometers on underground networks, and an average of 60,939 breakdowns per month were resolved.
On the commercial front, CUED reported the regularization of 410,341 customers and 1,864 solar panels, the cumulative installation of 603,411 meters, and the reduction of 76,173 customers billed without meters. Between 2024 and 2025, 90,564 cases of electricity fraud were detected, and 123 illegally connected transformers were dismantled, with an estimated recovery of 3.82 gigawatt-hours annually.
In financial matters, the organization highlighted that 2025 marked a historic record in both billing, with RD$12,597 million in September, and in collections, with RD$12,188 million in October, along with an improvement in productivity that took the service from 346 to 397 clients per employee between January 2024 and December 2025.
Based on that, the 2026 Loss Reduction Plan, designed before Santos' arrival, sets specific targets for each distributor: 3.0 percentage points for Edesur, 2.5 for Edenorte and 5.0 for Edeeste.
The program includes the construction of 22 new substations and 52 upgrades, the expansion of remote metering, and an investment plan exceeding US$600 million for this year, between its own resources and multilateral financing.
If these goals are met, CUED itself projects that the aggregate loss indicator could approach 35% in the short term.
Santos then takes over the leadership of an organization with a roadmap already drawn up by his predecessor, in a sector that continues to be under pressure due to the magnitude of its technical and commercial losses, and whose evolution in the coming months will depend on whether the new president of CUED maintains that plan or introduces his own adjustments to the strategy.
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