Business & Finance

Last July, Haiti President Martelly participated in launching the National Program of Hill Lakes (NPHL), sponsored by government of Haiti (GOH) in Jean-Rabel and Baie-de-Henne. At the two artificially-constructed lakes, he dispersed hatchlings into the water, while Ministers of Agriculture and Brother Armand, Community of the Incarnation Director, looked on.

HPHL addresses issues of crop and livestock survival, water conservation, and food self-sufficiency. With Brother Armand's outreach efforts, 160 hill lakes have been established with volunteer laborers, who have excavated earth to build artificial lakes with tools and machinery provided by GOH.

After nearly a year into the project, Prime Minister Lamothe and Senator Melius of the Northwest Department met with Brother Armand in Petite Place Cazeau to present to the media the NPHL, its progress, and further goal-setting.

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The concept and practice of fair trade has been practiced for many years. A primary example of fair trade is promotion of fair-trade coffee at politically progressive supermarkets. Paying a fair-trade price means a living wage for coffee farmers in emerging nations.

Haiti, one of the most poverty-stricken nations on the globe, is a small island with a population of only 10 million inhabitants. Over half its revenues rely on domestic agricultural output. Further weakening its economy are trade-liberalization policies that harm the export market, and inadequate land infrastructure.

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The Haitian HOPE (Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement) Act of 2006 (also known as HOPE I) was enforced on 6th Dec 2006. As a part of this Act, exports of certain Haiti-made apparels to U.S. were made tariff-free. The intention was to attract investment in apparel industry with the underlying plan being development and economic growth. The condition was that only those apparels will be made duty free whose raw materials were imported by Haiti from any country provided, a part of the sourced material must come from a country that is a part of U.S. Unilateral Preferential Trade Arrangement. Apart from this, Haiti was also required to establish:

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Marie Carmelle Jean Marie, Minister of Finance and Economy to Haiti, has seen the future and it involves, as always, reducing the country's need for aid from foreign lands and a modernization of the economy. What's new is that the goal is to change Haiti from a frontier market to an emerging market by 2030; the catch is to keep her ambitious application from becoming 'just a slogan!'

The plan, which involves attracting investments from companies in the US, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, would boost public finances. Jean Marie expressed the concern that this could not happen unless Haiti proves to investors it can manage its resources well. This demand for transparency and effective management was put into glaring light when Canada stopped its aid at the beginning of the year due to deficiencies in accountability. In the minister's bid to replace aid with investment, the role of PPPs (Public private partnerships) will be essential to revitalize the agricultural sector, which has been devastated by natural disasters time and again.

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A country's economic growth is dependent on two factors namely, 'Entrepreneurship' and 'Government'. While the two are not really exclusive mutually, the two can lead to sustainable economic growth. Either the government must undertake the economic development or it must provide assistance to the private sector entrepreneurs to carry out certain developmental works in an environment that is targeted towards the welfare of the economy as a whole. When this happens, any economy shows rapid and sustained growth. For Haiti however, the situation was and is different.

The biggest obstacle for Haitian economic growth is the political system of the country. For years, the country was under military rule and dictatorship. However, after the end of dictatorship when the country selected the party led by Jean-Bertrand Aristide through its first free election, the people of Haiti felt a sense of relief that wasn't long lasting. The government turned out to be more like a dictator with government officials getting involved in trafficking of drug. The leaders of the government called themselves as the 'Anti-Liberals'.

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The Haitian government has announced that, through the Western Union, the issuing of badly needed government payments, used to meet the needs of the poor through programs for schools and universities, the handicapped and over 200,000 people, will finally be more readily accessible to those in the dreaded 'last mile'.

At first, the service will make funds available to the needy through their more than 600 locations across the country. They also will give technical assistance to assist with payment delivery and plan to offer other options for distributing funds through bank accounts, prepaid cards and mobiles.

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Minister of Industry and Commerce, Wilson Laleau, met with President of the National Council of Free Zones (CNZF), Rode Préval on Monday to join forces with the Société Immobilière de Développement SA (SIDSA). The agreement is for the initiation of a new industrial free zone in Tabarre. Préval states that this will directly create as many as 3,500 new jobs and up to 15,000 indirect ones.

The projected Tabarre free zone will take up an estimated 3 carreaux of land and will house two buildings of over 10,000 square meters each. These modernly constructed industrial buildings were made with promoting Haiti in mind. The facilities are described as 'attractive and should entice overseas investors. They are slated to have circulation areas that allow ease in transport of the 56 40ft containers they are slated to boast.

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Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) and Haitian Hometown Association Resource Group (HHTARG) are presenting a forum, "Investing in Haitian Progress", at a total of nine cities in America, Canada, the Dominican Republic, and New York City, its first stop. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is funding the project, offering small and medium enterprise (SME) businesses matching grants from $50,000 to $200,000 for innovative business plans. The goal is to support development of SMEs to increase employment in Haiti.

Speakers at the forum will talk about private investment in Haiti, potential stakeholders, finance, program administrators, and investment bodies like Inter-American Bank that partner with the government of Haiti to support SMEs.

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Haiti is experiencing an imminent food crisis, which has at its core the destruction of rice farming. The agricultural sector of Haiti, made up of subsistence farmers, cannot compete in an international market overrun with poor quality imports, especially rice, Haiti's number one staple.

Back in the 1970s, rice cultivation was a thriving industry, requiring no foreign imports to meet domestic needs. But that changed at the start of the 1990s. An attempted coup against then-President Aristide set off global trade embargos, stifling Haiti's export market. At this juncture, cheap imports from abroad came in droves. Haiti, a desperately poor country, has needed development banks' aid. They drove a hard bargain, enforcing a lower import tariff, from 50% to 3%. This negatively impacted the economy, because it became more affordable to import U.S. rice than to farm it domestically.

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In a persistent effort to attract private investment for the reconstruction of Haiti, post the 2010 earthquake, Prime Minister (PM), Laurent Lamothe, and President of Haiti, Michel Martelly, hosted the Philanthropic Summit on 3/09/2013.

Martelly and Lamothe spoke at the glamorous event at the Miami Ritz Carlton Hotel Coconut Grove, arranged by the National Basketball Retired Players Association (NBRPA). Lamothe gave the keynote address to a roomful of potential investors, among them retired NBA Hall of Famers Glen Rice, Penny Hardaway, and Haitian-American Olden Polynice, Haiti's newly-named goodwill ambassador.

Lamothe stressed the government of Haiti's actualization of the 5E Initiative (Education, Rule of Law, Energy, Employment, and Environment), particularly education. He claimed that more than a million children under the Universal Schooling Program Free and Compulsory have been attending school, but more funding is needed to continue the 5E program.

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