President Martelly has repeatedly said, “Haiti is open for business.” He has traveled the globe pushing for more foreign investment to create jobs.
The biggest success is the Caracol Industrial Park, a $300 million project on the north coast that could potentially employ 65,000. It opened this fall with one tenant, a subsidiary of a Korean sewing company, employing 1,000 people. Numerous hotels also continue to pop up: Last month workers broke ground on a Marriott expected to be Haiti’s first four-star hotel.
Yet, the economy is sluggish (growing by 2.6 percent, instead of the 7.9 percent the International Monetary Fund had projected). And summer storms devastated crops, pushing food prices higher, causing inflation to go up, and raising concerns of widespread hunger.
