Via The Haitian Times: Decline in remittances from pandemic could be hard-felt in Haiti. Excerpt:
Members of the Haitian diaspora are among the millions of people throughout the world facing job loss, late payments and other financial burdens, as the economy contracts in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
But few countries rely on remittances from diaspora members as heavily as Haiti. In 2019, remittances represented more than 36% of Haiti’s GDP. The economic slowdown in the developed world could have a serious impact on Haitians who rely on this money to pay for necessities like food.
According to figures provided by Inter-American Dialogue, an international affairs think tank, remittances to Haiti totaled more than $3.3 billion in 2019, a growth of 4.5% from the previous year. The year-over-year increase prevented Haiti’s economy from further declining, as the country experienced negative economic growth last year, wrote Manuel Orozco, a senior fellow at Inter-American Dialogue, in a March 18 paper, “Migration Remittances and the Impact of the Pandemic,” which examined remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean.
A decline in remittances could exacerbate an alarming food crisis in Haiti. Free trade policies imposed by industrialized nations since the 1980s have made the country more reliant on imported food, eroding its once-robust agricultural sector and leading to increased unemployment. The crisis has also been exacerbated by natural disasters and the political unrest that ground the country to a halt in 2019.
Charles Edouard-Denis of Petionville owns a seafood export company called HOPE Haiti. Many of the fishermen he employs are no longer working, after Haitian law required his company to stop fishing for lobsters beginning April 1.
These employees cannot count on a social safety net, like many workers in the United States.
“If they were getting some remittances, they’re going to be more dependent on those as time goes by, until we are allowed to start back up again and start producing and exporting,” Edouard-Denis said.
He expressed hope that business will resume by July. Until then, he is helping his employees by paying their full salaries for April and agreeing to pay half of their salaries for both May and June.
The $1 million worth of seafood HOPE Haiti exports each year by Edouard Denis’s estimate represents a small chunk of Haiti’s export base, one source of foreign exchange and income. Clothing, textiles and cosmetics account for nearly 90% of the roughly $1 billion in goods Haiti exports. Along with remittances, this key source of income has also been threatened by coronavirus.
