Wednesday, as part of the presentation of the first results of the project "Haiti Priorise" Aviol Fleurant, Minister of Planning and External Cooperation and Bjorn Lomborg, the founding President of Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC), accompanied by experts in economics, Haitians and foreigners including Ketleen Florestal, P. Raymond Magloire, Kesner Pharel and Dr. Vernon Smith, Nobel Laureate in Economics 2002 gave a joint press conference.

It should be noted that "Haiti Priorise" is a research project funded by the Government of Canada which aims to establish a bank of development projects according to the methodology set up by the CCC for the benefit of all the institutions concerned with the development of the country, particularly the Haitian state.

As part of this project, more than seven hundred 700 ideas have been proposed by experts of the country who include government officials, NGOs, companies, multilateral organizations, donors and academics. This group included over 40 prominent Haitian and foreign economists who worked on some twenty themes in order to identify and evaluate the best proposals likely to improve the socio-economic and environmental well-being of Haiti.

In his speech, Minister Fleurant said the initiative was timely and will contribute to enrich the training in cost-benefit analysis of projects, concerning the effectiveness of public investment in Haiti, recalling that "If the increase in production is rightly, raised to the rank of government priorities, the establishment of a Project Bank should be the first step because only projects that have passed the comparative advantages stage and undergoed the cost-benefit review will be able to have an impact both on growth and on poverty reduction."

For his part, Bjorn Lomborg stressed that Haiti has every interest to invest in growth sectors capable of generating profits in the long term. One way, he said, to improve the difficult socio-economic situation of the Haitian population.

On the basis of studies and interviews, five priority areas were identified : EDH reform, wheat flour fortification, expansion of access to early childhood education, the raining of rescuers for first aid and the increase of the immunity coverage of infants and 80 projects that can be financed for Haiti have been retained.

Thumbnail photo from left to right : Bjorn Lomborg, CCC President, Vernon Smith, Nobel Laureate of Economics and Minister Aviol Fleurant

HL/ TB/ HaitiLibre