By responding to the UNDP’s invitation for the weekly meeting called \u2018Wi Ayiti Kapab,\u2019 hosted by Xavier Michon, the UNDP representative in Haiti last week, economist Pierre Marie Boisson highlighted the role of inflation in Haiti’s economic situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Responding to the UNDP’s invitation for the weekly meeting called “Wi Ayiti Kapab,” hosted by Xavier Michon, UNDP\u2019s representative in Haiti last week, economist Pierre Marie Boisson highlighted the role of inflation in Haiti’s economic situation. He also took the opportunity to explain that GDP cannot be the perfect tool to measure Haitian growth, because unlike many other countries, the purchasing power of Haitians doesn\u2019t come from a national strategy but rather from an external source: unconditional remittances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Haiti receives an average of two million one hundred thousand (2,100,000) transfers per month through the registered transfer companies, said economist and CEO of Sogesol, Pierre-Marie Boisson, who was speaking at the weekly UNDP meeting called \u201cYes, Haiti Can.\u201d These transfers provide a certain purchasing power to 80% of Haitians who regularly benefit from this flow of money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, the runaway inflation that has plagued the country for ages is eroding the purchasing power for goods and services of 80% of the population. Since Haiti is a consumption-driven economy, the population\u2019s ability to consume is drastically reduced due to this inflation. By preventing consumers from buying goods, it hurts the entire economy that depends on them, according to Xavier Michon\u2019s guest.\u201cIn other words, all the producers who sell to these people, whether in the food industry, agriculture, or services, all sectors of the national economy are facing a drop in demand due to inflation. This explains the decline in GDP,\u201d explains the chief economist of the Sogebank Group, who finds a second reason to justify why GDP is not a perfect indicator of growth in Haiti.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe second reason why GDP is an imperfect measure of social well-being in Haiti is that the purchasing power of Haitians, unlike in the United States, France, and the Dominican Republic, comes largely from something that isn\u2019t generated in Haiti,\u201d says Mr. Boisson. Because, he points out, Haitians, unlike the English, the French, etc., aren\u2019t people who invest and generate purchasing power from a local business.Referring to a World Bank report on Haiti, published after the Duvaliers left in 1986, he mentioned that this report had estimated at 85 million US dollars the total value of transfers sent by the diaspora to Haiti. By 2010, around 25 years later, the amount of transfers to Haiti had risen to 1.1 billion dollars, and by 2025, transfers reached 5.5 billion. This means that, between the year of the earthquake and today, transfers to Haiti have quintupled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, according to Pierre-Marie Boisson, the purchasing power that was generated to allow Haitians to consume came from outside. As a result, when we talk about GDP as an indicator, it measures Haitian growth very poorly, he insists.When you look at Haiti’s balance of payments today, it’s about 5.5 billion dollars coming into the country in 2025. Of this 5.5 billion, roughly 5 billion comes from transfers. Compared to the past, that is, the period before the fall of the Duvaliers, about four decades ago, the balance of payments was around 85 million dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Given that, you might be tempted to think from these numbers that the economy has grown enormously over these four decades. Yet, over the past ten years, Haiti has experienced seven consecutive years of GDP contraction. Today, measuring this growth based on GDP is misleading, according to the economist.The purpose of the economy is to consume, according to Pierre Marie Boisson, who asks: Where does Haitian consumption come from? Matter-of-factly, Mr. Boisson replied that Haitian consumption comes from Haitians living abroad (Brazil, Chile, France, Canada, Dominican Republic). The majority of Haiti’s GDP is generated in the United States, at 80 or 82%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To the great surprise of those attending this UNDP meeting, Pierre-Marie Boisson suggested that Haitians living in the Dominican Republic generate an income three times higher than the value of Haitian exports. “Which is considerable,” agrees Xavier Michon, UNDP representative in Haiti. Even more so when you consider that most Haitians emigrating to the neighboring country are poor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By responding to the UNDP’s invitation for the weekly meeting called \u2018Wi Ayiti Kapab,\u2019 hosted by Xavier Michon, the UNDP representative in Haiti last week, economist Pierre Marie Boisson highlighted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_angie_page":false,"content-type":"","_aifi_custom_prompt":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","page_builder":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"coauthors":[57],"class_list":["post-7086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7088,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7086\/revisions\/7088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7086"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}