Business
Haiti: Looks to it’s diaspora and Asia for investments
“DIASPORA DOLLARS”
Lifting Haiti out of its status as the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation is a priority for Martelly and prime minister Conille, a U.N. development expert who has announced ambitious plans to modernize infrastructure, establish rural and urban development zones and create 1.5 million jobs in five years.
Lamothe said Haiti was also looking to attract visits by Haitian exiles overseas, he said 4 million lived abroad, to bring funds into the nation of over 9 million people.
“There are 4 million Haitians living in the diaspora. For example, if you take 25 percent of that figure, if you have one million people coming here spending US$100 per trip, that’s US$100 million additionally in foreign direct investments,” he said.
“We want to route all the diaspora dollars into Haiti,” Lamothe said, underlining the Martelly’s government’s insistent message that it wants to draw a line under Haiti’s checkered past of violence, dictatorships, corruption and poverty.
More than 80 percent of Haiti’s people live under the poverty line, the CIA’s “World Factbook” says. It estimates 2010 unemployment at 40.6 percent and says two-thirds of the Haitian labor force do not have formal jobs.
Lamothe said other investment opportunities included “great tourism areas” and projects to rebuild the quake-damaged presidential palace and other official buildings, as well as entire city neighborhoods left in ruins by the 2010 disaster.
Martelly’s government has also vowed to resettle more than 600,000 homeless quake survivors still living in tent camps.
“There is a new management in town. We want to show that basically a small Caribbean nation that’s been through a lot of problems is now doing better,” Lamothe said.
