Haiti Commission Assigns $1.6 Billion for Recovery

By Dialogo
August 19, 2010

I think the recovery efforts in Haiti are slow, a lot of money, little work, slow work, many meetings…many ideas, slow in acting.

A special recovery commission announced more than 1.6 billion dollars in
projects to rebuild Haiti following January’s earthquake, including a
200-million-dollar plan to create fifty thousand new agricultural jobs.

The projects, which also include programs to rebuild the health and education
sectors, were announced at a meeting of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC)
in the capital, Port-au-Prince, officials said.

The commission, which is jointly headed by former U.S. president Bill Clinton
– UN special envoy for Haiti – and Haitian prime minister Jean-Max
Bellerive, is supposed to determine what rebuilding projects will receive support
from a multimillion-dollar fund offered by foreign donors.

Following the devastating earthquake on 12 January, which left up to 300,000
dead in the impoverished Caribbean nation, foreign governments, multilateral
organizations, and non-governmental organizations promised in March to provide $9.9
billion for Haitian reconstruction.

Of these funds, $5.3 billion will be provided in the next two
years.

For the twenty-nine projects announced, which will cost more than $1.6
billion, almost $1 billion in funds has already been assigned, commission staff
said.

The projects with approved financing include a 200-million-dollar
agricultural development program that will increase peasants’ total income in
specific areas and will create more than fifty thousand sustainable
jobs.