export - Haiti Observer Blog

After a long gap of 60 years, Haiti has exported a shipment of bananas to Europe under a three year contract valuing €93 million, each year. In contrast, Haiti's next neighbor Dominican Republic, every year sends up to 350,000 MT of premium organic fruits, overseas.

Although these two nations share similar soil, same climate along with logistics and trade characteristics, Haiti's export of agricultural products were almost negligible. 'Agritrans SA' is a $27 million ambitious agricultural project attempting to establish a banana business in Haiti with modern agricultural equipment such as irrigation pumps, an artificial lake with 700.000 gallon capacity, tractors, etc.

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The first crop of organic bananas has been harvested, and is on its way to Europe and parts of the Caribbean. A German cargo ship docked at the coastal city of Cap Haitien to pick up and transport 100 tons of organic bananas. Before the ship left Haiti, German quality assurance professionals examined the load of 8,000 bunches of bananas.

AGRITRANS, part of an agriculture association, is elated it has met the challenge to permit it to export organic bananas to the Euro zone market. In two years time, AGRITRANS expects 450 containers of organic bananas to be exported every week to Europe.

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Haiti had a good year in 2013 where garment export, a fast growing market for the nation, is concerned. The sales, totaling $800 million, were gathered from the sale of 20 million groups of T-shirts packed by the dozen and 1.5 million jeans packaged in the same way, among other things. With the standard so high, the country sets its cap further, hoping to export $1.2 billion USD for their 2014 period.

Last year the exports included products such as cotton trousers, suits, innerwear and other outerwear to buyers such as Walmart, Hanes, Gildan, Levy's, Target, Fruit-of-the-Loom and Kohl's. The desire now is to expand that reach and to have the Haitian garment industry permeating not just the United States and Canada, but also countries in Europe, Asia and South America.

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Should Michel Martelly say: Yap Rablabal, map travail? If you look at the latest data coming from the International Monetary Fund, you would say that he is right.

based on the latest information from the International Monetary Fund, Haiti's gross domestic product grew in the 2013 fiscal year by almost 4 percent. This is preliminary information that will be verified after the entire year is over. This is better than expected as the International Monetary Fund projected the growth at 3.4 percent as late as last June of this year.

Si se konsa, anbin bagay yo pa pi mal!

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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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Haiti's economy has tumbled, especially after the devastating earthquake in 2010. A lot of infrastructure was damaged, sending Haitians deeper into poverty. However, the country continues to take initiative to improve its economy and business market. As a matter of fact, it remains a free market economy that makes use of low labor costs and tariff-free exports to the United States market.

The country is working to attract more investors so as to prop up its economy. There are top sectors and businesses in the country that provide good investment opportunities. One of these is the garment sector. Haiti showed a significant growth in its exports in the first quarter of 2009. It recorded a rise of 16.1%, much higher than China's growth of 0.3%. Currently, Haiti is considered as the fastest growing exporter of garments to the United States. It has a wide range of clients, including Levi's, Walmart, and JCPenny. Also, half of its garment manufacturers are expected to boost their work force and expand their factories in the coming year.

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