Moontown

Minister with responsibility for Information, Daryl Vaz. JIS Photo

Addressing a press conference on Thursday regarding the arrival of Haitians on the island on March 23, Minister without Portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister, with responsibility for Information, Telecommunication and Special Projects, Daryl Vaz, said it would be too expensive to keep the Haitians here for long.

“As such, arrangements will be made to return them once we have been able to get in contact with the Haitian authorities and work out a smooth transitional return of the Haitians. It is very important that we send a message from now that Jamaica is very, very sympathetic, but based on our own situation here and our financial constraints that we are facing, bearing in mind that we did intervene shortly after the earthquake in Haiti and it has been at a cost to the Jamaican Government so far (we cannot afford to keep them indefinitely) ,” he explained.

Vaz informed that the cost to maintain the Haitians here adds up to approximately $9 million per week, when security, medical, transportation back to Haiti and other expenses are calculated. He noted that based on these expenses, while the Government is cognizant of the hardships in the French-speaking nation, it has to balance this with its responsibility towards the people of Jamaica.

He explained that money from the Haitian Relief Fund has been earmarked for housing earthquake victims and that $14 million has so far been contributed by private companies toward the efforts. However, he is appealing to other companies that collected money for the Haitian relief to forward these funds to the Government as soon as possible.

A total of 62 Haitians arrived in Jamaica on March 23, 35 at the Manchioneal Fishing Beach in Portland at 4:30 a.m. and another 27 at Winnifred’s Beach about

6:00 a.m. The groups included 45 men, 9 women and 8 children. They are being housed at the Port Antonio Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

Vaz reported that medical screening and treatment have been carried out by the Ministry of Health. He said three of them have been admitted to the Port Antonio Public Hospital for matters relating to dehydration and high fever.

The Minister also informed that the health officials carried out vector control activities to ensure that there is no chance of malaria spread associated with the Haitians’ arrival.

“Vector control teams have already sprayed the boats on which the Haitians arrived as well as the articles brought in with them. The Manchioneal area was fogged as well as the vicinity of the Fair Prospect Health Centre. Any possible breeding sites in Winnifred were checked and found to be sterile,” Vaz assured.

He further added that representatives from the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency have processed the Haitians and it is believed that about 16 of them are repeat visitors to Jamaica.

Vaz outlined that an eight-hour shift system has been worked out by the Ministry of National Security for the provision of security for the temporary shelter and that the shelter management programme has been activated.

“Let me just indicate that I actually went there and paid a site visit and I’m satisfied with the conditions I saw. I want to thank the Seventh Day Adventist Church for their kind assistance. The Salvation Army and Red Cross have also joined, in terms of providing food and toiletries to them,” he noted. (Caribnet)

LEOGANE, Haiti (Reuters) — Laborers at Haiti’s only working sugar mill, the Jean Leopold Dominique de Darbonne, chew on sugar cane stalks to sustain themselves as they prepare the factory for another grinding season.

Haiti children. AFP PHOTO

But it is foreign imported sugar and rice, besides dirt-poor subsistence farming, that sustains Haiti’s nearly 10 million population — an underdevelopment dilemma that has been highlighted as the Caribbean nation struggles to rebuild after the devastating earthquake in January.

More than two centuries ago, Haiti was Saint Domingue, France’s Caribbean jewel built on sugar and slavery, and the richest colony in the world. A bloody slave revolt won independence from France in 1804.

But the Haiti that was bludgeoned by the January 12 earthquake had the unenviable identity of being the poorest state in the Western Hemisphere, unable to feed itself and spending a staggering 80 percent of its revenues to pay for food imports.

Since the disaster, which Haiti’s government believes may have killed more than 300,000 people, foreign relief groups have brought in vast quantities of food aid to feed more than 1 million people left homeless by the quake.

But as the government and foreign experts prepare for a donors’ conference to be held in New York on March 31, they are calling for a complete reform of Haiti’s decrepit farm sector to break the crippling dependency on food imports and aid.

“We won independence 200 years ago but … not really, because we’re begging consistently,” Regine Barjon of the Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce, who is pressing for private investment in Haiti’s agriculture, told Reuters.

She said foreign donors, multilateral lenders and aid groups must concentrate on making Haiti economically self-sustainable, especially in food, after the quake, if the country can ever hope to escape from its poverty trap.

Barjon said imports of rice, sugar and poultry, largely from the United States, were $550 million a year. “If Haiti was able to produce all these things, and it can … we would reduce our annual trade deficit by 50 percent,” she said.

“The mills and plants for sugar, rice and poultry are there. What they need are investments to restart.”

One example is the Darbonne sugar mill, located southwest of the capital Port-au-Prince outside Leogane, a town near the quake epicenter which was devastated. Most of its inhabitants live in tent camps situated between the ruins of their homes.

Built in the early 1980s with Italian cooperation, the mill was closed after two years because it could not compete with cheaper imports of sugar. Left prey to neglect and vandalism, it was restarted with Cuban help in 2001 following a request to Cuban leader Fidel Castro by Haitian President Rene Preval.

But the factory has been producing well below its full capacity, even though a team of Cuban technicians has kept it operational for nearly a decade.

It produced 2,607 tons of sugar in 2005, its best year since restarting, but made no sugar in 2009, instead manufacturing syrup for alcohol distillers.

This meager output compares to the 250,000 tons of sugar that Haiti imports each year, from the United States, the neighboring Dominican Republic and other sugar producers.

Experts now acknowledge that the influx over the past two decades of subsidized cheaper farm imports, ushered in by World Bank and International Monetary Fund free-trade policies that obliged Haiti to open its markets, delivered a virtual death blow to Haitian agriculture from which it has never recovered.

“Haiti should be producing its own sugar,” said Dominique Volcin, the Darbonne mill’s technical director since 2003.

“We need to modernize, because agriculture is the economic base of our country,” he added, saying the sugar sector needed a combination of determined state support and private investment to allow it to replace the cheaper imports.

The Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce’s Barjon is also the CEO of BioTek Solutions Inc, a U.S.-based company that is proposing a public-private partnership for the Darbonne mill.

The team of Cuban technicians who maintain the factory say it is technically sound but the main obstacle to increased output is the lack of sufficient sugar cane.

The factory sustained only minor damage in the earthquake and was to open the 2010 grinding season on Friday.

“We think the biggest problem is the supply of cane,” said one of the Cubans, Jorge Luis Perez.

Most of the cane growers in the surrounding area of Leogane and Gressier are peasant farmers working tiny half-hectare plots with poor resources. This means they cannot produce the sufficient quantities of high-yielding cane the mill needs.

On a visit to quake-stricken Haiti this week, former US President Bill Clinton recognized that the United States and international financial institutions like the World Bank, albeit well-intentioned, had been wrong to push developing states into opening their markets to cheap subsidized imports.

During his presidency from 1993 to 2001, he said he had signed legislation that had effectively increased the penetration of American rice into Haiti, which decimated that country’s own rice production.

“I think it was a mistake, I think it was part of a global trend that was wrong-headed,” Clinton told reporters, adding he was now looking to boost Haitian farm output by providing seeds and fertilizer through his own charitable foundation.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in collaboration with the Haitian government, has prepared a $721 million investment blueprint for the agricultural sector aimed at developing rural areas and production and boosting distribution channels and agricultural services.

But achieving the food self-sufficiency goal will clearly take time and political will, and also involve loosening the grip of past alliances between powerful importing impresarios and the country’s political rulers.

“So as to not import, you have to produce enough to feed everyone, and if you don’t produce enough, you have to buy it from somewhere else … that’s life,” said Volcin.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) – At Haiti’s famous Barbancourt rum factory [1], patches of grass and shrubs around the warehouses are burned black from where the aging golden liquor spilled from oak casks split by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Toppled caskets of rum (AFP photo)

Hundreds of liters (gallons) of premier rum, some aged up to 15 years, seeped into the parched soil from the toppled casks, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of potential export revenue for the Caribbean country’s oldest manufacturer evaporated into the humid tropical air.

“We never expected an earthquake,” said Thierry Gardere, Director General of the Societe du Rhum Barbancourt, which produces what it probably Haiti’s best-known export.

“We’d thought about floods, hurricanes, but nothing of this magnitude,” added Gardere, who estimated his total losses from the catastrophic quake, between damaged equipment and lost rum stocks, at $4 million (£2.6 million).

Now Gardere, the fourth generation of Haiti’s rum making family, is painstakingly trying to rebuild his export business back to its previous pre-quake level.

Barbancourt’s rum sales had doubled over the last five years to 3 million liters a year, carving out a niche brand name in the international liquor industry, with sales to the United States, Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Gardere expected that with the losses to his aged stocks, sales this year would fall to around 2.5 million liters and it would take four to five years to fully rebuild the reserve.

“Unfortunately, we are not able to bottle at the moment, and we have to put our aging rooms back in order,” said Gardere, standing among factory workers who were hammering and sawing to repair oak casks felled and splintered by the quake.

Other workers piped fresh batches of light-gold sugar cane alcohol into intact casks and the company was repairing pipes connecting the aging rooms and the bottling unit.

Gardere said that the factory, fed by sugar cane fields where this year’s harvest was already underway, was producing rum again, and he hoped that bottling for a fresh round of exports could restart within the month. A few weeks after the quake, which damaged Haiti’s main port, the company was able to fulfill some pending orders with already bottled stocks.

Fortunately, the factory’s sugar cane milling equipment and the distillery suffered little damage.

But at least two Barbancourt workers were killed and around 100, out of a total workforce of 250, were left homeless by the Jan. 12 quake, which Haiti’s government believes may have have killed up to 300,000 people in total.

The homeless employees were living at a temporary camp set up on the company soccer field. “We’re trying to help,” said Gardere, adding they were being supplied with water every day, and had been given tents.

Haiti’s already impoverished economy suffered a hammer blow from the earthquake, and a government report says the private sector absorbed 70 percent of the total damage and losses.

Estimates for the total national economic loss vary from close to $8 billion to $14 billion. Haiti’s government has put its overall recovery and reconstruction needs at $11.5 billion, ahead of a March 31 donors’ conference in New York.

Gardere said that one unforeseen byproduct of the earthquake was that it gave unprecedented publicity to Haiti and also to Haitian products like Barbancourt rum, which, coupled with the reduced stock, had boosted its market value.

“It could be good for the image … like a rare product,” Gardere said. But he was wary of complacency, saying that tight supplies after the quake allowed rums from the neighboring Dominican Republic to encroach on the local Haitian market.

Too long an absence from the international market could threaten the Haitian rum brand’s position there. “We’ll be giving priority to the export sector because if we’re out too long, it could be difficult to get back,” Gardere said.

Founded by French spirits maker Dupre Barbancourt in 1862, the company makes its rum from sugar cane juice through a similar double-distillation method as used for cognac making.

This makes it richer and heavier than many other Caribbean rums, said Gardere. The liquor is aged in special Limousin oak barrels supplied by French company Seguin Moreau. [2]

Gardere, whose own home was destroyed in the Jan. 12 quake, says he is looking at ways to protect his aging rooms, filled with racks of rum-filled oak casks, from future earthquakes.

“I need to look at California and Chile, to see how they are protecting their wines,” he said. (Caribnet)

CANCUN, Mexico (Bloomberg) — Cuba’s hotels could manage a sudden influx of 1 million American tourists if the US Congress lifts its 47-year ban on travel to the Communist island, Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero said.

Additionally, the Caribbean nation is set to expand its capacity of about 50,000 rooms, with groundbreaking scheduled for at least nine hotels in 2010, Marrero said. About 200,000 rooms may be added in the “medium to long-term,” he said. Cuba is also seeking investment partners for 10 golf courses and luxury hotels aimed at Americans, according to a ministry official.

“I’m convinced that today, with the available capacity, we could be receiving the American tourists without any problem,” Marrero said in an interview yesterday in Cancun, Mexico where he was attending a conference of 40 American and Cuban tourist industry representatives.

The tourism industry meeting comes as the US Congress considers a law that would lift the ban on travel to Cuba. Senator Byron Dorgan, one of 38 co-sponsors of the bill, said he has 60 votes lined up to win passage of the measure this summer. Similar legislation introduced in the House has 178 co-sponsors and needs 218 votes to pass if all 435 members vote.

“This is a 50 year-old failed policy,” Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, told the meeting yesterday in a phone call from Washington. “Punishing Americans by restricting their right to travel just makes no sense at all.”

President Barack Obama said March 24 that he’s seeking a “new era” in relations with Cuba even as he denounced “deeply disturbing” human rights violations by its government. He did not say where he stands on lifting the travel ban.

Obama last year ended restrictions on Cuban-Americans traveling to Cuba and transferring money to relatives back home. The US State Department has also held talks in Havana with Cuban officials about restoring mail service and cooperation on migration issues.

Tourism to Cuba increased 3.5 percent amid the global financial crisis to 2.4 million visitors last year, with 900,000 visitors from Canada leading the way, Jose Manuel Bisbe, commercial director for the Tourism Ministry, said in an interview this week in Havana.

Bisbe expects foreign arrivals to grow by a similar amount this year. If the US travel ban is lifted, hotels won’t be overburdened because Americans will visit year-round and face capacity problems only during the winter high season when occupancy reaches 85 percent, he said.

“Havana has been the forbidden city for so long that it will be a boom destination even in the low season,” said Bisbe, who estimates Cuba will add another 10,000 hotel rooms in the next two or three years.

Daniel Garcia, who has sold tourists used books in Old Havana since 1994, said more Americans would be good for business.

“The gringos can’t help but spend their money,” Garcia, 43, said at his stand in front of the neo-classical building that housed the US Embassy before Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. “They are the easiest tourists to sell to. They never ask for discounts.”

Marrero said the government can’t finance development of tourist infrastructure on its own so it’s scouting for foreign partners such as Majorca, Spain-based Sol Melia SA, which already manages 24 hotels on the Communist island.

“The Cubans have provided us with a fairly complete picture of their tourism product and future opportunities for US businesses to work in this market,” Lisa Simon, president of the Lexington, Kentucky-based National Tour Association, said in an e-mailed statement. “We look forward to a follow up conference next year in Cuba, should the legislation pending in Congress be approved.” (Caribnet)

NEW YORK, USA (Bloomberg) — Haiti President Rene Preval will join US and United Nations leaders next week in seeking $3.9 billion to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure following the January earthquake that caused more than 200,000 deaths.

Haiti President Rene Preval. AFP PHOTO

The UN, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank will present a 250-page reconstruction plan at a donors’ conference in New York on March 31, according to Jordan Ryan, director of the UN Development Program’s crisis prevention and recovery unit. Ryan said as many as 60 nations may pledge new funds.

Ryan said Preval also will submit a 50-page Haitian government “Vision and Plan” for his nation’s long-term economic development.

“The government decided very early on that they didn’t want just to focus on the earthquake and the damage of the earthquake,” Ryan said in an interview. “They wanted to seize the opportunity of the earthquake to, in a sense, re-launch a development path for Haiti.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon will join Preval in opening the daylong conference at the UN. Former US President Bill Clinton, the UN’s special envoy for Haiti, also will speak at the conference, which foreign ministers of France and Japan are expected to attend, Ryan said.

Ryan was one of the leaders of a monthlong mission to Haiti that produced the Post Disaster Needs Assessment report focusing on rebuilding schools, hospitals, government ministries, roads, airports and ports. It will propose creation of what he called a “multidonor trust fund,” to be overseen by the World Bank, to channel pledges to reconstruction needs.

The $3.9 billion will cover reconstruction for about two years, Ryan said. The longer term price tag has been estimated at $11.5 billion.

The government deserves a “B or B+” for its participation in the needs assessment mission, Ryan said, while saying that some ministries remain hindered by losses of personnel and offices. About 200 Haitians and 153 international experts worked on the assessment report.

Emphasis is being placed on what Ryan described as “building back better,” meaning new construction codes, housing developments that shift the population from the capital Of Port-au-Prince and environmental goals such as reversing the deforestation of much of Haiti.

The Inter-American Development Bank may approve a $2 billion grant for Haiti, Executive Vice President Daniel Zelikow said this week. Haiti would receive $200 million a year for 10 years, Zelikow said in an interview. The bank’s member countries are discussing the proposal for Haiti at an annual meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

The bank will forgive almost $500 million in debt owed to it by Haiti’s government, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said. (Caribnet)

Jagdeo who heads a special task force by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to assess the financial crisis and come up with solutions told a media conference here on Friday that region’s debt situation is worsening.

Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo. AFP PHOTO

“The region is heading towards bankruptcy if countries could be declared bankrupt, many of the countries simply cannot pay their way, and they can’t meet recurring cost and pay their debts, unless there is radical restructuring or increase sources of revenue, the situation will get worse,” Jagdeo declared.

The president believes the poor productivity and the heavy debt build up in the region was responsible for this situation in many Caribbean countries.

This, he said, was exacerbated by the global financial crisis as the demand for exports, remittances and tourism were negatively impacted

“We hope with the abatement of the crisis, not that we are out of the woods as yet and it is still very tenuous , but this may improve the macro-economic fundamentals of these countries, but they simply can’t sustain their large quantity of debts,” he explained.

Jagdeo said during the CARICOM heads meeting with top officials of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) earlier this month in Dominica the region’s crisis was highlighted.

He however explained that there is a huge challenge of crafting a regional debt strategy since individual countries have unique debt problems and this must be address on a case by case basis.

The president said that “many countries will not have a good future unless their debt problems are tackled.”

Jagdeo said the situation despite not being amplified is very serious and noted that Guyana was once in this position where it was faced with a huge debt overhang.

“We had that when the debt burden use to suck up over 94 percent of our revenue, it sucked the life out of our economy, and we had tough period of dealing with that,” the president added.

During the heads meeting in Dominica, the World Bank President Robert Zoellick committed to sending experts to the various Caribbean countries to assess their debt management strategies.

Only recently a senior St Lucia government official has said Caribbean countries are facing serious challenges of a similar nature as a result of their high levels of debt.

Director of Finance Isaac Anthony told a Caribbean Development Bank (CDB)/Institutional Investor Roundtable discussion that high debt levels have become a feature of most countries in the region.

“If you look right across the region the story is essentially the same. Revenues have declined substantially, while expenditure has remained pretty high, particularly given the needs of the government to provide much needed social safety net programmes,” said Anthony.

“This has resulted in a significant amount of debt by a number of countries. The question is: how do you really deal with this particular situation; clearly there will be need for the governments to maintain a fiscal policy stance that seeks to boost revenue, keep recurrent revenue under control while maintaining sustainable debt levels,” he told the forum.

Anthony pointed this Eastern Caribbean island as an example, where last year, the economy contracted by 5.2 per cent as a result of the global economic and financial crisis. (Caribnet)