a1010: Re: Duvalier period protectionism (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Philip Richter <philipcrichter@hotmail.com>

From: PCR

  I wrote to JoAnn Jaffe about this yesterday in response to inaccurate
statements from her and particularly Pina about import policy under the
Jean-Claudiste regime. She suggested I write to the whole list. Without
going over what I wrote to JoAnn yesterday, I'd like to add something that I
did not write to her for fear of offending her academic credibility.
  Under Jean-Claude, and under virtually every other Haitian government or
regime throughot the 19th and 20th century, there have been import duties or
tariffs on imported food products. Jaffe says that the "open market" - the
free international market - began under Baby Doc and continued thereafter.
This is not correct. The Jean-Claudist regime had import duties and quotas
on imported food up until its end in 1986. For rice, he quantity imported
was determined by the Department of Agriculture solely to make up for
shiortages, and the Department of Commerce issued import licenses totalling
only that quantity. (There very likely might have been 'monopsonic' control
of access to this licenses, I don't know.) Under the CNG (the junta) in
1987, Leslie Delantour, Minister of Finance and trained in the Chicago
school of economics, dropped the the Duvalier duties and quotas, and set 50%
tariffs on all imported grains and discontinued the practice of requiring
licenses. The intent of this new policy was to pressure "increased
efficiencies" in agricultural production, which, as JoAnn rightly points
out, was ridiculous given the resources available then, and now, to farmers.
There is alot to be said about this last bit, that is, the intents of
development policy and the realities of peasant production, technical
assistance, and credit, but I won't digress now.
   Pina may flip out when I say the following. The Aristide administration
negotiated the current food import policies - the "open market" - with the
lender's cartel while in exile and later, and Preval signed and instituted
them in 1996. I'm afraid this is the truth of the matter. The historical
'imperative', I would say, of Haitian government protectionism was broken
first and only by the lavalas administrations. Pina, please don't treat me
as badly as you treated those journalists yesterday. You would do better to
criticize the import "system" for corn and wheat under Duvalier, even though
you and I probably agree that privatizing the Minoterie d'Haiti is a bad
idea. Corn was imported by a government-granted monopoly - SOUNUAN - without
licenses, and wheat was imported solely by the Minoterie.
  I welcome contradicting references on this from Jaffe especially. My
information comes from my knowledge while living in Haiti under Jean-Claude
and the CNG, and from a report of the Center for Agriculture and Rural
Development of Iowa State University written under a USDA grant - this is
the only summary of the recent history of grain import policy in Haiti that
I can find.
PCR



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