Haiti’s Budget for FY 2023-2024 Reveals the Roots of its Underdevelopment

(Français)

First of all, let’s begin by admitting that the State in Haiti is not a Haitian State, a national State, which seeks to improve the living conditions of its people.

It is a predatory State at the service of local and multinational capital to maintain the country in chronic underdevelopment and facilitate the imperial domination of neocolonialist Western powers.

Without a legally constituted Parliament, there is no legitimate or legal budget. So the predatory State will use sophisms to talk about a “corrected budget” or a “renewed budget,” and suddenly this month a “corrected budget 2023-2024″ was adopted in the council of ministers of a government that enjoys no legitimacy, based on a political consensus initiated by the USA’s foreign policy, presented to the vassal countries of CARICOM, and proposed for unconditional adoption to the Haitian flunkies of the traditional political parties who are only interested in padding their wallets to the detriment of Haiti’s higher interests.

The 2023-2024 “corrected budget” was reduced by 20.5% compared to the initial illegal “renewed budget” for 2023-2024. It was only 254.8 billion gourdes ($1.93 billion US) compared to 320.5 billion gourdes ($2.43 billion US) for the fiscal year which ends on Sep. 30, 2024.

Haiti’s meager financial resources will continue to be wasted through bogus projects and increased corruption in non-transparent activities of unconditional cash transfers to more than 25,000 households, financial support to 35,000 assembly factory workers, targeted subsidization of around 25,000 public transit operators, cash transfer to more than 280,000 parents of schoolchildren in national schools in seven of Haiti’s 10 departments through the “Food Shock Window” (FSW) program of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). On what criteria will the FSW choose these beneficiaries? What is the control body for this funding? Who will evaluate these projects? Who will audit this spending? What sanctions will there be for irregularities and fraud?

These programs are similar to those during the Martelly era to squander the PetroCaribe funds: programs like Ti Manman Doudou (Sweet Little Mama), Katye Pam Poze (My Neighborhood is Relaxed), the community restaurants, Kore Etidyan (Support Students), etc. To top it all off, the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development (MARNDR) will distribute 61,230 “solidarity baskets” to vulnerable households from the public treasury, and facilitate the building and supplying of 400 community restaurants in Haiti’s 10 geographical departments, or 40 per department on average, financed by the FSW. Let’s remember the so-called “improved goats” that cost the public treasury dearly under the PHTK regime.

The servicing of the internal and external public debt accumulated by the PHTK regime and its allies is 9.3% of state expenditures, the costliest item, or 23,608,760,747 gourdes ($179,071,151.78 US);

more than the amount allocated to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, 16,358,812,871 gourdes ($124,080,695.89) or 6.4% of the budget;

more than is allocated to the Agriculture Ministry, 15,810,024,014 gourdes ($119,918,162.59 US) or 6.2% of the budget;

more than is budgeted for the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 1,854,080,338 gourdes ($14,063,097.39 US) or 0.7%;

more than is budgeted for the Environment Ministry, 3,126,651,029 gourdes ($23,715,476.09) or 1.2% of the budget;

more than is set aside for the Tourism Ministry, 535,565,801 gourdes ($4,062,237.14 US), or 0.2% of the budget;

more than is allocated to the Foreign Ministry, 7,770,403,717 gourdes ($58,938,084.82 US) or 3.0% of State expenditures;

more than the amount to fund the Ministry of the Interior and Local Authorities 8,418,579,429 gourdes ($63,854,461.95 US) or 3.3% of the budget;

more than the credits of the Ministry of National Defense 2,222,075,149 gourdes ($16,854,317.79 US) or 0.9% of the budget;

more than what’s allocated to the Public Health Ministry, 16,350,972,129 gourdes or 6.4% of State expenditures.

For a country plagued by public insecurity that exceeds the capacities of the State and chronic food insecurity, with constant epidemics, a domesticated and vassalized diplomacy, a fragile environment and trade imbalances and deficits, it is a scandal when the payment of interest on the internal and external public debt is higher than the expenditures for our sovereign State ministries.

Here are the roots of our underdevelopment.

Liberty or Death! Homeland or Death!