Haiti
Farmers remain homeless and out of work while the land grabbed by the company Jovenel Moïse founded, Agritrans, now hosts a private banana plantation. Moïse is the only man running in Haiti’s fraudulent runoff presidential elections this Sunday, and is connected to the land grab responsible for the expulsion of as many as 800 peasants.
By signing, on 11 December, an economic partnership agreement with the EU, Haiti has jointed the fourteen other member states of Cariforum, the organisation of Caribbean countries, that signed the EPA in October 2008.
Haiti today signed the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and joins the fourteen Caribbean States that signed the EPA in October 2008.
The signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the CARIFORUM Group - Caribbean Community states and the Dominican Republic - went ahead as planned. However, Guyana and Haiti, which had both expressed reservations about sections of the agreement, did not attend the signing ceremony in Barbados.
It is imperative to continue with the mobilization so that Haiti remains part of the growing group which rejects the pressure being applied by the European Union for CARIFORUM members to sign the EPA at the next meeting, scheduled for 15 October in Barbados.
The possibility that Dominican Republic and Haiti could sign a free trade agreement as early as next year is being met with approval by commercial, governmental and industrial sectors, as well as economists and poultry producers, newspaper El Caribe said Sunday.
The Economic Association Agreement between Cariforum and European Union (EPA) countries will lead Dominican Republic and Haiti to negotiate a Free Trade Agreement in one year, said Industry and Commerce minister Melanio Paredes, during the Business Table organized by magazine The Economist.
A trade preference bill included in one of the last bits of legislation passed before the end of the 109th congressional session Dec. 9 is being hailed as having the potential to help start a turnaround in the bedraggled economy of the Caribbean nation of Haiti.
The United States Congress has passed landmark legislation normalising trade ties with Vietnam. The trade vote package also expanded trade relations with Haiti, and tweaked Washington’s trade preferences with several states in Latin America and beyond.
Two years after Caribbean Community leaders meeting here refused to recognize Haiti’s interim government, they returned here Monday to embrace its new president and re-engage CARICOM’s poorest member-state.
HAITI CAN return as a member of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) after its elections, says Prime Minister P.J. Patterson.
