Without Venezuelan oil, Haiti has trouble getting light

Jennifer Jean opened a small catering business at the age of four in Bourdon, a lower middle clbad neighborhood of the capital. Haiti, Port au Prince

Since his debut at weddings or occasional corporate events, the company thrives and Jean even earns up to $ 1,000 a month, enough to pay the bills and send his daughter, now a teenager, and her son to seven years in a good private school

But then Power outages have occurred, making basic tasks impossible. Without refrigeration, He has to buy ice cream on the street to keep the food cold.

"Before you can take your car at any time of the night, at 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning"said Jean, thinking of emigrating to the United States. "Now all the streets are dark, you do not know what you are going to find."

Thanks to the Venezuelan aid program Petrocaribe, Haiti he must receive 60,000 barrels of crude oil per day under conditions much more favorable than those of the market. More than half of the oil costs, which were sold at a sharply reduced price, could be reduced to 25 years at an interest rate of 1%, which would have allowed the government to use these benefits. to promote economic development. In return, Haiti supported Venezuela in front of the United States in the framework of regional bodies such as the Organization of American States.

But while Nicolás Maduro's regime was facing the downturn in oil production and its own economic problems, Caracas stopped sending billions of dollars of subsidized oil to Central American and Caribbean countries, including Haiti, where the end of the cheap crude has resulted in major cuts in electricity supply.

On the other hand, the Office of Monetization of Development Assistance Programs of Haiti (BMPAD for its acronym in English) quickly experienced its own difficulties. After starting to buy crude on international markets, the department said this year that it has run out of operating funds and stopped delivering fuel to the power stations that keep the bulbs on.

Now Most of the population of Haiti only has electricity for three hours a day.

During the night, the activity was almost paralyzed while the number of armed robberies increases among street vendors or homes enjoying the darkness. Gas stations spend empty days, making it difficult for many HaitiansGo shopping or take your kids to school. Hospitals depend on emergency generators to operate.

"We can not find gas for our vehicles, customers do not come, sales are falling in all sectors"says entrepreneur Reginald Boulos, whose investment fund manages large supermarkets and car dealerships.

The fuel crisis is pushing the Haitian economy to the brink of recession. The gross domestic product growth in 2018 was 1.5%, less than half of what the government was expecting. And economists say that it is likely that this year the number will repeat itself. According to estimates, annual inflation has reached 17% and a gallon of gasoline is sold on the black market between six and 12 dollars.

Fuel distributors receive approximately 27 cents per gallon of subsidized gasoline from the state and sell it to consumers. This helps the official price of the gallon to stay around 2.5 dollars. But the Haitian state in ruins has not paid subsidies for months and has at some point accumulated a debt of about $ 71 million. This has led businessmen to call for an end to the complex system of oil purchase by the state.

The solution to the crisis is at least complex. When President Jovenel Moise tried to eliminate fuel subsidies on July 6 and raise the price of several petroleum products from 38% to 51%, protesters took to the streets to demand his resignation. . The proposal was immediately withdrawn and the International Monetary Fund then offered a low interest loan of $ 96 million to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Dissidents are also dissatisfied with corruption. A Senate investigation revealed that more than $ 2,000 million in profits from the Petrocaribe program had disappeared or been stolen, which led to a public campaign that called for months of further investigation and investigation. prosecution.

"The scarcity generates panic, the economy is affected, the best solution is to liberalize the market and regulate it to avoid these problems"said Maarten Boute, CEO of Digicel, the country's largest mobile phone provider.

Other countries in the region have handled the Petrocaribe final much better. Jamaica has record economic performance, although Cuba, for its part, suffers from a shortage of food and fuel, although it is not as serious as in Haiti.

The Moise government has asked BMPAD, the Ministry of Finance and private energy companies to suggest ways to further open up the oil market. Beloved son Ignace St Fleur, director of BMPAD, said the agency would not give up its role as a supervisor in the import and wholesale pricing of oil.

"The state reserves the right to intervene directly in the market," he said.

But in the district of Bourdon, Jean says that his situation is more and more complicated.

He does not find gasoline, the price of a taxi multiplied by two and his children have to strain their eyes to study with a wire of light.

"Without electricity, we are in a very difficult situation", a point.

By Ralpg Thombadaint Joseph for Associated Press