15701: Hermantin: Miami-Herald-Proposed U.S. bill may be boon to Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Miami-Herald

Posted on Wed, Feb. 05, 2003

Proposed U.S. bill may be boon to Haiti
BY MARIKA LYNCH
mlynch@herald.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Marleine Ateus couldn't afford to attend high school.
Instead, she took sewing lessons and for the past year has stitched shirts
bound for America's Wal-Marts and Kmarts in a factory on the edge of Haiti's
capital.

Ateus, 26, makes Haiti's minimum wage of about $1 a day so little she now
walks part of the way to work to save on bus fare. But with more than half
the country officially unemployed, she says: ``I am thankful to God that He
gives us at least this work.''

Twenty years ago, factories in Haiti provided more than 60,000 jobs, and
produced blue jeans, shirts and most of the baseballs hit in U.S. parks. But
business owners fled as political instability rocked the country. Today,
less than half of those jobs are left.

Now, though, some U.S. lawmakers are pushing a bill which aims to revive the
struggling garment assembly businesses. If it is passed, Haitian clothing
factories would be exempt from paying a U.S. import tax if they bought their
fabric from any of several foreign countries. Currently, factory owners only
receive that exemption if they buy fabric from U.S. manufacturers. Fabric
from other nations, however, is often cheaper.

African nations have a similar benefit under a 2000 law aimed to help some
of the world's poorest countries. Haiti would have the same edge.

``We can become more competitive. Then buyers would look to us as an
assembly point rather than going directly to the country that produces the
fabric," said Jeffrey Blatt, an American businessman and 19-year veteran in
Haiti's garment industry.

During that time Blatt left Haiti twice for the Dominican Republic, once
after a trade embargo squeezed business in the early 1990s. He says he
returned to conserve his original investment, and now his 800 employees in
Port-au-Prince produce 24,000 garment pieces a day.

Though backers expect some resistance from lawmakers in garment
manufacturing states like North Carolina and South Carolina, they say the
measure won't displace jobs in the United States. The kind of garments that
are made in Haiti aren't made in the United States anymore, said Jean
Edouard Baker, past president of the Haitian Manufacturers Association.

The measure may bring work now being done in Asia back to the Western
Hemisphere, and create a ripple effect in Miami.

Clothes cut and stitched in Haiti often pass through South Florida
distributors before they are sent around the country, factory owners said.

FIRSTHAND LOOK

Recently, a group of U.S. lawmakers who were visiting Haiti toured a factory
and touted the bill, which is being pushed by leaders who criticize and also
compliment embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

''There's no reason Haiti should not be able to get back to where it was''
in terms of manufacturing jobs, said Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican
who is sponsoring the bill, while standing amid fabric samples and sewing
machines at one plant.

PRESIDENT'S PRAISE

Aristide, too, praised the measure he said would ``bring new prospects for
employment and jobs in Haiti.''

If the thousands of jobs -- as many as 50,000, business leaders say -- do
materialize, the effect on Haiti's economy would be exponential. Here, every
job supports five people, businessmen say.

In the case of factory worker Emmanuel Jean-Baptiste, a screen printer who
earns $3 a day, the level is twice that. The 22 year-old is the only person
in his 11-member family with a job in Haiti's formal sector.

After work, Jean-Baptiste takes his $3 a day salary, and buys socks and
shoes that his family members can take downtown to sell in the market.

''They are so poor, I support them as much as I can,'' Jean-Baptiste said.







_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail