Korean factories to become Haiti's top employer

January 13, 2011 12:11 am | Updated 12:11 am IST

ON A MISSION: Former U.S. President and U.N. special envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton  in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Carrefour-Feuille. Photo: AFP

ON A MISSION: Former U.S. President and U.N. special envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Carrefour-Feuille. Photo: AFP

As former U.S. President Bill Clinton looked on, Haiti's government signed a deal on January 11 with a South Korean garment manufacturer to create an industrial park that will export clothing to the United States.

The deal on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Haiti's devastating earthquake will make Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd. the largest private employer in an impoverished Caribbean nation desperate for work.

Officials said it will create 20,000 jobs, though many who work in Haiti's few existing garment factories today say their low wages are not enough to feed their families.

“I know a couple places in America that would commit mayhem to get 20,000 jobs today,” Mr. Clinton said at the gathering in a Port-au-Prince industrial park.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said the agreement will help break Haiti's dependence on foreign aid as a substitute for a functioning economy.

“Aid had never been able to bring sustainable economic prosperity to any nation, including ours,” Mr. Bellerive said. He called the signing “the best day of my life.”

The deal was in negotiation long before the earthquake, moving forward after Mr. Clinton was named U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's special envoy to Haiti in 2009 and given responsibility for increasing private investment.

Identified as a key area

Garment factories were identified as a key area for growth because under the relatively stable rule of dictators, and before the political upheaval that followed their ouster, Haiti was an important regional manufacturer of cheap clothing and other goods.

The agreement will create an industrial park near the northern city of Cap-Haitien also open to other factories. It is scheduled to open in early 2012.

Sae-A said it will invest $78 million on equipment and agreed to adhere to International Labour Organisation standards.

The United States, represented at the signing by senior State Department official Cheryl Mills, will provide $120 million for generating electricity, housing for workers and improvements to the port.

The Inter-American Development Bank will provide $50 million for building factory shells and infrastructure. The European Union is separately spending to improve roads in the region. Haiti's government will own the park and contract its management.

Mr. Clinton said he hopes the deal will encourage other investors to move forward with projects in Haiti.

There are mixed opinions about the quality of life for workers in the factories. Few Haitians have formal work and many jump at the chance to receive any regular wage.

The key report by economist Paul Collier, commissioned by Ban and quoted in press materials given out at the signing, identified Haiti's low wages as a competitive advantage, saying it has “labour costs that are fully competitive with China.”

The deal is one of the few significant plans toward the government's post-quake goal of reversing decades of migration from the desiccated countryside to Port-au-Prince.— AP

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