5351: Re: 5340 Cuba helping Haiti to modernize sugar mill : Poincy comments (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: caineve@idt.net

Must Ayiti accept any help offered just because the country is in need? 

I strongly believe that some must also be rejected even though it comes from a 
well-intended donor. A simple cost and benefit analysis will show that helping 
Ayiti revamping its sugar industry can do more harms than good. On this basis 
government officials would be better off to say NO THANKS to the Cuban 
government.

My rationale is that the sugar industry in Ayiti is purely a cash crop industry 
aimed only at exportation on the international market. The corrosive nature of 
the industry negates its potential for economic development. For at all cost it 
ought to be avoided if the government is really serious about economic 
development. Simply think that it would energize one sector of the economy and 
would create jobs is not enough. Economic boost will never come from it. One 
must see how it exhibits the potentials of pulling other unrelated sectors into 
economic progress. 

Further, the country would incur a great cost in allocating resources to the 
sugar industry while other important areas are in greater need of both labor 
and financial resources not to mention the land and time factors. In this 
regard, creating a few jobs here and there is very insignificant without which 
Ayiti can well survive. The most defeating aspect of the sugar industry is the 
fact that its price is subjected to the international market caprice, a very 
unreliable source of revenue for cash crops.

It’s not because Cuba has shown willingness to help, as it has done in other 
areas and for which Ayiti should be grateful, that Ayiti must agree with this 
project. Any attentive look at what it would cost in the short and long term 
would shy government officials away from it.


Ayiti has lived, lives and will live
Mozeb



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