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