20960: (Chamberlain) International donors to meet in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Jude Webber

     LIMA, Peru, March 30 (Reuters) - International donors will meet in
Haiti on April 15 to discuss the troubled Caribbean nation's financing
needs, its Economy Minister Henri Bazin said on Tuesday.
     "On April 15, we are expecting the arrival of a mission of donors
which met in Washington on March 23," he told Reuters in an interview on
the sidelines of an Inter-American Development Bank meeting in Lima.
     The World Bank, which chaired the March 23 meeting, said that donor
countries, international financial institutions and regional groups were
looking at ways to ensure a coordinated response to helping Haiti after its
former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was ousted in an armed revolt
last month.
     A conference for making pledges is expected in June, Bazin said.
     Bazin declined to say how much money Haiti -- already the poorest
country in the Americas -- needed to rebuild itself.
     But he said the estimated direct and indirect cost of the political
turbulence -- including damage to public buildings and lost jobs -- was,
according to "very conservative" estimates, at least $600 million. "And
it's not finished. The evaluation is continuing," he added.
     Bazin, an economist and French-educated university professor who has
been in the job only two weeks, said Haiti's financial situation was
"really dreadful," with only enough reserves to cover one month of exports.
     The deficit in the first four months of the 2003-2004 fiscal year
reached "alarming levels" of more than 3 billion gourdes -- a dollar is now
worth 30 gourdes, he said.
     The deficit for the whole of the previous year was 4 billion gourdes.
     Haiti posted nominal growth of 0.4 percent in 2003 after three
straight years in the red.
     Gross domestic product per head is currently around $350 a year and
total unemployment about 55 percent, Bazin said.
     Bazin said he would use a meeting with IADB President Enrique Iglesias
on Wednesday to urge him to accelerate aid disbursement to Haiti "because
we really need it."
     IADB plans include a $70 million infrastructure project. He said
disbursements stood at $47 million since December after resuming activities
in July last year once Haiti had paid its arrears, Bazin said.
     But that was not enough to reverse the net negative flow of reserves
-- Haiti was now in the situation of paying more into the IADB than it
received from the bank in aid, he said.
     Bazin said the government was in contact with the International
Monetary Fund, which had reopened its office on the island, and was
discussing how to relaunch the IMF's Staff Monitored Program, or SMP,
"perhaps with a new basis, with new content." He gave no details.
     The IMF reached a deal last May on a one-year economic program that
could pave the way for millions of dollars in aid, but Haiti missed targets
because of political instability and the program is now on hold.
    Haiti has built up arrears of around $30 million on loan repayments to
the World Bank. If those debts are paid off, the country will be eligible
for money from the World Bank.
     Bazin said the IMF program was very important because it gave a signal
to other lenders that they could also resume. "So it can't wait a year," he
said.
     The minister said he had held talks in Lima with U.S., Canadian,
French and other officials, seeking to "put pressure on the bureaucracy."
     "The signals are generally quite good but now it's time to turn words
into deeds," he said.