(Trinidad Express) Haiti will need an estimated US$2 billion a year for its rehabilitation and restoration in the aftermath of the devastating 7.0 earthquake that struck there on Tuesday.

And the leaders of several countries and international lending agencies, such as the World Bank, are now seriously considering forgiving Haiti’s large debt in order to assist in its ability to recover from the quake, which has killed an estimated 50,000 people, affected some three million survivors and has devastated the country’s infrastructure and economy.

’It’s a huge amount of money,’ Prime Minister Patrick Manning said on Monday night during a news conference at the Piarco International Airport, after returning from the Dominican Republic, where he had attended a special meeting to discuss the way forward for Haiti.

Manning said a decision was made to expand a fund arrangement he had proposed on this country’s behalf to assist Haiti before the earthquake, during the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain last year, for contributions by Western hemispheric countries only, to include countries from all over the world and international agencies as well.

’A back-of-the-envelope calculation for the amount of money that would be required to rehabilitate Haiti and to construct it was a minimum of about $2 billion per year.

This is US dollars,’ Manning said. He added that raising this amount of money for Haiti will require ’a huge amount of effort’ and, therefore, it is not ’just now a question of resources from the Western Hemisphere’.

Monday’s meeting was called by Dominican Republic President Leonel Antonio Fernandez Reyna at the request of Spain, which at this time heads the European Union.

’Trinidad and Tobago also proposed that whatever had to be done, the rehabilitation of Haiti could not properly take place with Haiti carrying any significant amount of debt.

We proposed debt forgiveness, an idea that was taken up and, in fact, has been included in the Santo Domingo Declaration which was the outcome of the meeting held in Santo Domingo today,’ Manning said.

He said a donors’ conference for Haiti will take place on January 25 in Montreal, Canada, and an international summit to further examine the best way forward for Haiti will take place in April ’to devise a strategic plan for the development of Haiti to be considered by the Latin American and Caribbean and European Union Summit to be held in the May 16-18 in Madrid Spain’.

As for any official policy regarding Trinidad accepting any citizens from Haiti, Foreign Affairs Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon, who also accompanied Manning on Monday, said this has not yet been considered by the Government, since it doubts this would be necessary given the distance of Haiti from Trinidad and Tobago.