News Information

• NEWS_POSTED_BY: Haiti Place
• NEWS_POSTED_ON: May 28, 2015
• Views : 827
• Category : Haiti News
• Description : BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
  jcharles@MiamiHerald.com
  
  MAY 3, 2015
  
  Photo: An ariel view of the sewing factories at northern Haiti’s Caracol Industrial Park. | Courtesy of the Inter-American Development Bank
• Location : Caracol, Nord-Est, Haiti

Overview

• CARACOL, HAITI - While visiting this one-time bean field in Haiti’s northeast region, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared it was a new day.
  
  “We had learned that supporting long-term prosperity in Haiti meant more than providing aid,” Clinton told a roomful of star-studded investors at a luncheon celebrating the opening of the United States’ largest post-quake investment in October 2012. “It required investments in infrastructure and the economy that would help the Haitian people achieve their own dreams.”
  
  Nearly three years after the opening of the Caracol Industrial Park, some wonder if Clinton and others underestimated what it would take to create jobs and the environment for sustainable economic growth in a country riddled with disaster and political gridlock.
  
  “Caracol is still on crutches,” said former Finance Minster Marie Carmelle Jean-Marie.
  
  In the nearby town of Caracol, several say that the park hasn’t transformed their lives as promised. “The park doesn’t benefit the people of Caracol,” said Renel Marseil, 31. “The foreigners have taken over Caracol for themselves.”
  
  Billed as a stepping stone to helping Haiti cut its dependence on foreign assistance in favor of trade, the complex today employs 6,200 Haitians, most of them garment workers sewing T-shirts, leggings and sweatshirts for Target and Walmart. The number is just 10 percent of the 60,000 promised. And while an informal State Department study shows that 1,000 mom-and-pop businesses have opened in nearby communities since the park’s arrival, the large multiplier effect proponents hoped Caracol would generate, hasn’t happened.
  
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