Haiti seeks $1.3B in aid from international donors

WASHINGTON: Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, is seeking $1.3 billion in reconstruction aid at a donors’ conference that opened yesterday. Prime minister Gerard Latortue said the money would be used for specific programmes his government has already established. “I believe the money given in aid will not be money given to the country to do whatever (it wants), but is money to implement a specific programme that has already been established and therefore there is no danger that the system will derail,” he said in an interview with Associated Press Television News.

He said his government is making a strong fight against corruption and “no one would dare use that money for other objectives.” Latortue heads an interim government that replaced president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February. Aristide resigned and left the country under US escort. Secretary of state Colin Powell, World Bank president James Wolfensohn and Enrique Iglesias, head of the Inter-American Development Bank, are expected to make presentations at the two-day donors’ meeting today. “We’re very much hoping that the $1.3 billion will be raised at this conference,” treasury undersecre-tary John B Taylor said last week previewing the meeting. “We think there is a good chance it will. People will have to step up to the plate.” A group of international organisations came up with the $1.3 billion figure as part of a needs assessment to get reconstruction of roads, schools and other services going.

Taylor said the United States would contribute $232 million and the Inter-American Development Bank $400 million. He said he hopes the additional $700 million can be raised from the European countries, Canada and other donors. He said that the private sector has to get involved in the reconstruction effort and one session of the conference will be devoted to that effort. Caroline Anstey, the World Bank’s director for the Caribbean, said, “Haiti’s needs are immense and pressing. The two-day conference will give the government, donors, civil society, the private sector and the international community a chance to discuss the government’s two-year programme and mobilise finance to support it.”

Two-thirds of Haiti’s population of eight million live in poverty. Half of the country’s urban population does not have access to clean drinking water and life expectancy does not exceed 53. Latortue’s government, which will serve until early 2006, plans to create more than 44,000 jobs and dispose of 50 percent of garbage in urban areas, upgrade the conditions of 500 slums and double electricity services to the capital, Port-au-Prince, to 12 hours a day. Conference organisers say they want to avoid the mistakes of the past. In 1995 a donors’ conference raised $900 million for Haiti but the World Bank and other organisations shut down their programmes in the country because the government did not carry out sufficient economic reforms. This time there will be an oversight and monitoring committee to make sure the programme stays on track and hold both the donors and the government accountable, Anstey said.