Bellerive asks private investors to 'believe in Haiti'

Lavern Clarke, Business Editor

CORAL GABLES, Miami:

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive on Tuesday appealed for countries that had been so quick to promise help after the January earthquake to speed up delivery of the pledges, saying the delays were holding back recovery efforts.

Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, was totally devastated by the quake, leaving a housing deficit for some 400,000 families, amounting to 1.5 million people.

At a cost US$25,000 per unit, it will take US$10 billion to solve the housing problem alone, Bellerive said Tuesday, in the final evening session on day one of the two-day 2010 Americas Conference. The housing bill alone equals the US$9.9 billion of pledges counted up to April.

Roads are being rehabilitated and others built, including new highway infrastructure, to improve connectivity between Port-au-Prince and other areas; a hospital under construction is to open in 18 months; and the Haitian government is engaging the private sector to ensure that projects conform to standards for a better Haiti, when the capital eventually rises from the rubble.

Bellerive said everything was being done to a master plan for a better, sustainable Haiti, but that the pace of the roll-out of recovery programmes was being held up by lack of funds.

He also appealed for private investors to take a leap of faith and trust that Haiti would not evolve into infighting ahead of the November election.

"We are climbing the mountain of recovery and reconstruction," Bellerive told the conference. "We are asking all of you to walk with us".

7.0 earthquake

Haiti, which is CARICOM's poorest member, was struck by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in January, killing 230,000 and displacing 1.5 million.

The world rallied to the country's aid, but eight months later, with the eyes of the world elsewhere, the Government is being heavily criticised for the slow pace of the recovery - only two per cent of roads have been cleared of rubble and victims of the quake still live in unsafe tent cities that leave them exposed to the elements and the women to constant abuse.

Bellerive acknowledged the criticisms as true on points of fact, but pressed back against them as not squaring with what is practical - saying clearing Haiti's streets at a faster pace requires resources that the country does not have, and that the pace of the roll-out of programmes was dependent on funding pledges received, a schedule over which Haiti had no control.

The country is almost entirely dependent on aid.

Bellerive also told the conference, in response to criticism from a member of the Haitian diaspora in Miami, that the criticisms of the conditions of Haiti and its tent dwellers from international media, human-rights organisations and others, ignore the fact that similar conditions existed in Haiti even before the quake, but no one was paying attention.

To date, he said, 80 per cent of students displaced in the disaster are back in school.

Haiti has a US$100-million plan to rehabilitate schools - 80 per cent of which were damaged in the quake, Bellerive said - but will need equipment and books. He also said an announcement is pending on a 50,000 jobs programme that was fully funded.

"We believe in the future of Haiti, now and forever," said the Prime Minister, in assertion of common purpose in the country - a message aimed at potential investors.

"We desperately need more jobs and investment. You are in wait-and-see mode because of the November elections, but there is a plan in place," he said. "We believe in that plan."