Monday, July 20, 2009

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Bahamas to share Haiti's $1b Haiti's completion of a series of economic reforms prescribed by the IMF has won it over a billion dollars in grant money. That progress is likely to pay dividends to The Bahamas by stemming the flow of economic asylum seekers. Under the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative — approved by the boards of the International Development Association (IDA) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — Haiti was granted US$1.2 billion of debt relief for reaching the completion point. Haiti is now the 26th country to attain the goal and effectively pocket that money instead of paying it back to international creditors. To reach that completion point, Haiti carried out a number of reforms despite a challenging environment marked by major natural disasters, a food and fuel crisis, difficult political conditions, and the impact of the global economic downturn, says the IMF. The changes were aimed at establishing a more stable macroeconomic environment and at implementing its national poverty reduction strategy. Haiti strengthened public expenditure management by better focusing poverty reduction spending, producing audited government accounts, ensuring commitment to an asset declaration law, and adopting a law on public procurement. All of that may pay off for this country by encouraging Haitian nationals to stop at home rather than taking to the leaky boats bringing hundreds here each year. Officials have long argued that substantive improvements in the country's economic position and a marked improvement in the quality of life are the best way of curbing the Bahamian costs associated with repatriation and educating those Haitians who remain behind. That in mind, it's worth noting that as part of the initiative Haiti established a financing mechanism to allow over 50,000 children to attend school, allocated over 20 percent of recurrent spending to education, and made progress toward implementing the teacher training program. In health, it approved an HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment plan and improved immunization rates for measles and DPT3. Friday, July 3, 2009