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Dear Colleagues

Yesterday was the 12 month anniversary of the Haiti earthquake ... and the start of a year of terrible suffering for the people of Haiti.

The text below is some of the PR coming out of the Clinton Foundation and the international enterprise sector that is doing their thing in Haiti. This is the URL:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/01/12/haiti.economy/index.html?iref=allsearch

I have strong views about this type of help for emergency and development. More comments below!

Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- Haiti's economy is getting a boost thanks to a venture with one of Korea's largest companies that promises to bring 20,000 garment industry jobs to a new industrial park in the north of the country.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive were joined by members of the Interim Haitian Recovery Commission, the Inter-American Development Bank, Haitian business leaders and the chairman of Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd. at the Haiti Apparel Center in Port-au-Prince as they signed an agreement to build the North Industrial Park. It's part of an effort to rebuild the Haitian economy that began even before the earthquake struck one year ago.

"This will inspire people all over Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia who have thought seriously about investing in Haiti and not come through," said Clinton. "What we need is a commitment to be competitive in getting investment and putting people to work, and then we need to build the institutions that will allow the people to flower. That is our commitment."

Smiling, Bellerive said that looking back over the past year, "This is the best day of my life today."

The project is expected to generate $500 million in wages and benefits over 10 years and result in Haiti's first textile mill, according to its backers. Investment in the industrial park will also include the construction of at least 5,000 homes. The United States will oversee the construction of a power grid that will provide electricity to the park and the surrounding area.
The garment industry had been the prime source of Haitian exports before the earthquake and it remains so today. About 28,000 people currently work in Haiti's garment sector, manufacturing products for Gap, JCPenney, Wal-Mart, New Balance and other well-known brands.

Georges Sassine owns a garment plant in Port-au-Prince that employs 530 people. He believes the garment industry holds the key to growing Haiti's economy and making the country self-sufficient.

"Today, this industry represents over 50% of our earned foreign currency earnings. It also represents over 50% of the total commercial exports of Haiti," he said.

Sassine didn't have a problem retaining buyers after the earthquake. "We shipped our first container 10 days after the quake. We were ready to do business."

At the time, he had to ship his goods over land to the Dominican Republic before delivering them to buyers. Today, he is able to ship goods from a reopened port in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

This is not ALL bad ... ... it is not all wrong! But the basic business and economic model being used is one that has serious issues associated with it.

The biggest single problem is that this is a low wage profit driven initiative ... with very little understanding of the key needs of the people and the society. Considering the amount of investment involved there is relatively little value adding benefit that remains in Haiti.

A better emergency rebuilding and development model is one where the needs and the capacities of the people of Haiti are the starting point ... and how can investment be made so that there is the biggest impact on closing the gap between need and local capacity. The industrial parks being promoted by outside investors are serious about profit making for investors but not as serious about the benefit for Haiti. Yes ... there are jobs, and that is good ... but besides this, the product has not much benefit for the economy of Haiti.

The core of sustainable community development progress is using local resources to do things that the local community needs ... giving a return to investors in the process. These foreign direct investment projects have the investors first, and the local community is a second tier priority. Frankly, The Clinton Foundation should know better ... but I do not think they do.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess.