Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Haiti: The Economy
Haiti in 1983), and establishing the United States-Haitian Business
Development Council and an Overseas Private Investment
Corporation commercial loan program.
Haiti's share of the FY 1998 appropriations for the United
States Agency for International Development (USAID) totaled
US$140 million, consisting of US$72 million in Economic Support
Funds, US$26 million in development assistance, and
US$42 million in Public Law-480 (see Glossary) food aid.
Channeled through NGOs to circumvent public-sector inefficiencies
and vagaries, these funds are used to provide humanitarian
aid, increase agricultural productivity, promote health
projects, strengthen private-sector economic growth, redirect
relief efforts toward developmental activities, and help Haiti
pay its arrears to international institutions. Humanitarian assistance
from NGOs has included food for approximately 1 million
Haitians and help in upgrading the planning and
management capabilities of the Ministry of Public Health and
Population. Over and above sponsoring vaccination programs,
the United States has financed basic health services for more
than 2 million people.
As the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti has
been the recipient of generous economic assistance from
numerous multilateral and bilateral development agencies and
financial institutions. However, historically, the United States
has been the major aid source. United States aid, which began
in 1944, three years after the last United States economic advisers
of the occupation left Haiti, has, however, been punctuated
by interruptions dictated by political developments. Because
PresidentJohn F. Kennedy terminated all but humanitarian aid
to the Francois Duvalier government in 1963, Haiti did not participate
in the Alliance for Progress development program for
Latin America. United States assistance resumed ten years later
during Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime, and it continued until
January 1986, a month before the end of the Duvalier era.
United States aid was restored in unprecedented amounts
three weeks after Duvalier's exile, only to be suspended again
when President Ronald Reagan stopped nonhumanitarian aid
flows after the electoral violence of November 1987. Development
assistance resumed in the late 1980s but was terminated
after the 1991 military coup. The United States joined other
major donors in resuming aid in 1994, when a constitutional
government returned to Haiti.
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