Haiti looks to Asia, own diaspora, for investment

PORT-AU-PRINCE,  (Reuters) – Haiti is wooing Asian  manufacturers, and its own diaspora, to inject investments and  funds into the economy and create jobs to drive a recovery from  last year’s earthquake, the foreign minister said on Thursday.

Laurent Lamothe

“Our focus right now is two things: foreign companies to  come and invest and Haitians in the diaspora coming back to  invest,” Laurent Lamothe, a former businessman who is now  Haiti’s top diplomat, told Reuters in an interview.

President Michel Martelly, an extroverted former pop star  elected in March, has declared the impoverished quake-scarred  Caribbean nation “open for business” after Prime Minister Garry  Conille’s cabinet including Lamothe was sworn in on Oct. 18.

One of Lamothe’s first overseas visits was to South Korea,  where he discussed with the Asian nation’s leaders and business  executives last week plans to create more than 40,000 jobs in  Haiti next year through investments in industrial parks.

“We are looking at the apparel sector and technology  sectors — for example, electric razors, putting together cell  phones and things like that,” the foreign minister said, adding  the projected investments in the parks totaled $224 million.

Lamothe said Haiti, whose capital and economic center  Port-au-Prince was wrecked by the 2010 earthquake, could offer  foreign apparel manufacturers and assembly industries proximity  to the large U.S. market. It also enjoyed preferential access  to the American market for garment exports.

“There are a lot of Asian companies, especially in the  apparel manufacturing sector, that want to deliver goods  quickly to the United States and the proximity we have to do  this in a very short turn-around helps Haiti,” Lamothe said. Haiti is eligible for duty-free entry of textiles to the  U.S. market, irrespective of the source of inputs, under U.S.  legislation — the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act, the  Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership  Encouragement (HOPE) Act and the May 2010 Haitian Economic Lift  Program (HELP) Act which expanded the Haitian garment quotas.

With support from the U.S. government and the  Inter-American Development Bank, one of South Korea’s biggest  garment manufacturers, Sae-A Trading Co Ltd, aims to initially  invest more than $70 million in an industrial park in northern  Haiti, creating up to 20,000 jobs.

Further investments in and around Port-au-Prince by other  South Korean entrepreneurs are seen creating another 20,000  jobs next year, Haitian officials say.

 “DIASPORA DOLLARS”    

Lifting Haiti out of its status as the Western Hemisphere’s  poorest nation is a priority for Martelly and prime minister  Conille, a U.N. development expert who has announced ambitious  plans to modernize infrastructure, establish rural and urban  development zones and create 1.5 million jobs in five years.

Lamothe said Haiti was also looking to attract visits by  Haitian exiles overseas — he said 4 million lived abroad — to  bring funds into the nation of over 9 million people.

“There are 4 million Haitians living in the diaspora. For  example, if you take 25 percent of that figure, if you have one  million people coming here spending $100 per trip, that’s $100  million additionally in foreign direct investments,” he said.

“We want to route all the diaspora dollars into Haiti,”  Lamothe said, underlining the Martelly’s government’s insistent  message that it wants to draw a line under Haiti’s checkered  past of violence, dictatorships, corruption and poverty.