Korean firm pushes ahead with plans for Haiti garment plant

A leading apparel manufacturer in South Korea says it is pushing ahead with plans to open a large garment assembly plant next March near the coastal village of Caracol in the northeast of the country.

Sae-A Trading Company Limited, which supplies garments to major United States retailers, said the factory will create 20,000 jobs, paying at least four times the average Haitian's share of the annual gross domestic product.

The operation is to include the country's first facility for producing textiles, a knit and dyeing mill, Sae-A said and will be the main tenant in the Northern Industrial Park, a new 617-acre free trade zone.

"I didn't really set out to bring people hope," said Kim Woong Ki, Sae-A's chairman, whose company already has operations in Guatemala and Nicaragua.

"Coming here, seeing the site and walking among the people, I realised that what I'm going to do here in creating the factory and the jobs, is give people hope. For the first time ever, apparel sewn in Haiti will be using fabric made in Haiti," said Kim.

The industrial park may also house two other apparel companies and a furniture manufacturer, according to Mark D'Sa, a Miami, Florida-based GAP executive, who has been on loan to the US State Department to work on Haiti's trade policy.

In what US officials call an "unprecedented collaboration", Washington is providing the Northern Industrial Park project with US$124 million for constructing 5,000 houses, a 25-megawatt electricity grid, and a waste and water treatment plant.

The Inter-American Development Bank is also providing about US$100 million for buildings and roads.

Sae-A said its investment is US$78 million, bringing the funds being poured into creating the free trade zone to US$302 million.

- CMC