Search Results for: Haiti

Universities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Madagascar, Nigeria and Yemen have been highlighted as institutions where academics or students were killed because of their beliefs or activism in the past academic year, though a report from campaign group Scholars at Risk (SAR).…

Factory owners and stakeholders in Haiti’s billion-dollar apparel and textile industry fear that without serious political and security intervention, the industry could buckle under pressures imposed by the country’s powerful and violent gangs. 

That fear is growing after two garment manufacturing factories, H4H and Palm Apparel, located southwest of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, in Carrefour, were forced to close their doors in early September leaving an estimated 5,000 workers on the breadline. …

A wait and see approach is being adopted by officials in Haiti’s apparel and textile industry following the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, which came as the country struggled to cope with the continuing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.…

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) member state of Malta – along with Haiti, the Philippines, and South Sudan – have been added to FATF’s increased monitoring watch list, with all four countries promising to work with the global AML body to improve their dirty money controls.…

Entrepreneurship abounds across the diverse island nations of the Caribbean where small, independently-owned beauty product businesses thrive and have been successfully vying for space alongside major international brands in pharmacies, boutiques and family-owned stores alike.

What many manufacturers lack in start-up capital, they make up for in innovation and close proximity to a wealth of organic, raw materials that are finding new favour with modern, discerning consumers at home, with an eye to developing export sales.…

MORE than 52,000 Haitian garment sector workers are likely to be demonstrating on the streets of the island’s capital city, Port-au-Prince, next week after trades unions representatives rejected the increase in the minimum wage proposed by the government.

The Haitian government published a decree on the minimum wage increase for various industry sectors on October 1st, in its official newspaper, Le Moniteur, Presses Nationales d’Haiti.…

BY this time next year, there could be as many as 30 garment manufacturing factories that are owned and operated by Asia-based companies in Haiti, according to Georges Sassine, president of the Association des Industries d’Haïti (ADIH).

The Caribbean country has seen an influx of Asian-owned businesses since early 2017 and Sassine said there are presently almost 20 such garment factories in Haiti.…

THE IMPENDING December 1 expiration of the Dominican Republic Earned Import Allowance Program (DR 2-for-1 or EIAP) has been met with equanimity by the Caribbean country and its manufacturers who hope the trading relationships created by the system can expand.

With the CAFTA-DR (Central America-Dominican Republic-United States Free Trade Agreement) continuing, the Dominican deputy minister of foreign trade Yahaira Sosa said in a recent speech: “Although not everything has gone as planned, regarding… exports and attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI), there are points that deserve to be highlighted.”…

GARMENT manufacturing industry insiders in Haiti are optimistic that their sector can continue expanding in size, as long as the Caribbean country’s government delivers economic and social stability. This is not a given in Haiti, which has suffered from serious political instability since the dictatorial regime of former President Jean-Claude Duvalier (called ‘Baby Doc) was overthrown in 1986.…

KNITWEAR is a key part of the growth in clothing manufacturing that is becoming an important part of the economies of several Caribbean countries, providing thousands of jobs and producing apparel worn not only in the region but in the USA, Canada, Europe and elsewhere.…

THE INTERNATIONAL Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) has released an ambitious policy plan designed to steer the industry towards sustainability. Called the Berlin Declaration, having been released at the fourth World Cocoa Conference, of governments, farmers, traders, grinders, processors, manufacturers, researchers, trade unions, civil society organisations, trade unions, consumer organisations, it says higher farm gate prices should be paid.…

AUSTRALIA INTRODUCES DIRECTOR IDENTIFICATION NUMBER SYSTEM

THE AUSTRALIAN government has announced it is introducing a Director Identification Number (DIN) system for businesses, with each company director in Australia being given a unique identifier. These will enable the Australian Taxation Office, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and other regulators to check director activities and spot wrongdoing, claimed the minister for revenue and financial services, Kelly O’Dwyer.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed a new revamped European Union (EU) directive on combating fraud and counterfeiting of non-cash means of payment, with a key aim of criminalising scams associated with virtual currencies.

This legislation, which updates now obsolete 2001 rules, would insist EU member states treat as crimes possessing, selling, procuring, importing and distributing a stolen or unlawfully appropriated counterfeited or falsified non-cash payment instruments.…

The official leading Switzerland’s efforts to combat money laundering in the country’s banking system has denied that a scandal unveiled last week involving Credit Suisse shows weaknesses in efforts to stop ill gotten gains being hidden in Swiss banks. Credit Suisse has acknowledged that tax authorities in France, the Netherlands and the UK are investigating the bank for tax evasion and money laundering.…

A report released yesterday (Mar 10) by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD) has advised textile manufacturers to support government efforts to tighten environmental rules, saying they are unlikely to cause a loss of business.

The report is an attempt to dispel the widely-held view that tighter environmental rules increase costs and damages business – especially in emerging market manufacturing hubs.…

Playing the blame game with worldwide known fashion brands has become a key strategy at Brazil’s labour and employment ministry, stopping the country’s textile and clothing sector from exploiting vulnerable workers, government inspectors have told WTiN.

They say that the high impact and publicity raids on manufacturing plants over the last five years are finally leading to businesses becoming more responsible over the hiring of workers to toil in poor conditions for little pay.…

The lack of coordinated control of unmanned aircraft (drones) gathering information and data following a disaster such as the recent Nepal earthquake has been highlighted at the bi-annual European Civil Protection Forum, in Brussels. A debate staged on April 6 on the subject was told by Michel Feider, director of Luxembourg’s Search and Rescue Agency (CHECK), that there had been poor co-ordination between the groups using drones responding to the earthquake disaster Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) were trying to map the resulting physical damage and monitor population movements and camps, as they had done following the Hurricane Sandy incident in Haiti five years ago.…

The trend towards the dual sourcing of garments has accelerated since the middle of the last decade. The sourcing pattern involves initial volumes being sought in the east, with lead times of up to three months, and replenishment from locations closer to the consumer, within weeks or even days.…

The request was highly unusual. But, when the ambassador of Haiti to Canada heard that Montreal’s Mirabel airport was to be demolished, his thoughts turned to his country’s Cap Haïtien airport, which was undergoing large-scale renovation. The doomed airport’s equipment, he figured, would be of more use in Haiti than on the scrap-heap.…

BRITISH Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has welcomed the striking of an Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) agreement to automatically share tax information on individuals by the year 2018. “Tax evasion can only be tackled with a global solution,” he told journalists at the OECD Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes meeting in Berlin.…

Sourcing trends in fast fashion in Europe and north America are in flux, being affected by the economic downturn, changes in consumer behaviour and growing awareness of industry practices, especially in the wake of the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh last year.…

IN the 1970s and 1980s, the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean did not have a comprehensively robust reputation for sound financial management. Many Caribbean island states had newly emerged from colonialism, finding their way as independent countries. And many Latin American countries were riven by social discord, even civil war, with many under military rule.…

NURSING is always a challenging profession, but the chance to use life-saving health skills in the wake of natural disasters and civil conflicts is valuable to many nurses.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) tap a UK International Emergency Trauma Register (UKIETR) database established by UK-Med, which includes the details of nurses and doctors available to be flown into disaster zones where local health services have been overwhelmed.…

The Philippine garment industry says it will relaunch its lobbying efforts to push a law through the US Congress giving it privileged access to American markets, after the shelving of the long anticipated proposed America’s Save Our Industries Act (SAVE Act).…

IT is common sense that for really fast fashion, sourcing should be made as close to a home market as costs will allow. And for the world’s two largest fast fashion markets – the European Union (EU) and the United States – geography does provide some useful neighbours able to offer lower cost out-sourcing, albeit not as cheap as in east and south Asia.…

THE WORLD’S 49 least developed countries have been given another eight years to implement the intellectual property protection rules demanded by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This means that their governments have the freedom to choose whether to protect trademarks, patents, copyright, industrial designs, geographical indications and other rights, potentially harming pharma companies.…

WITH mobile communication service providers facing an increasingly complex but growing market, they are being offered a range of third party services to help navigate a path to maximum profitability in this new commercial world. And with consumers using multiple devices and switching between data, video and voice, it is useful not only to be supplied software systems that helps make sense of this communications Babel, but to be advised and helped along the way.…

BY CARMEN PAUN IN BRUSSELS

THE EUROPEAN Commission is hoping that the recent overhaul of the European Union’s (EU) Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) will increase the flow of rare earth metals and aluminium oxide into the EU. Concerns persist about supplies of these important industrial minerals.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

CARIBBEAN jurisdictions are stereotypically seen as information black-holes whose minimal filing requirements for companies and trusts facilitate fraud.

Think Stanford International Bank and Westbond International Bank, two Antigua based vehicles for high-profile Ponzi schemes. Also, the Madoff scandal in the USA led to the liquidators of Fairfield Sentry – a British Virgin Islands (BVI) domiciled hedge fund that was among Madoff’s main victims – unsuccessfully trying to claim back money from investors who had legally withdrawn money from Sentry.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE, IN PORT-AU-PRINCE

HAITI: American universities help Haiti higher education recover from earthquake

Garry Pierre Pierre

Two years after suffering from an earthquake on January 12, 2010, that wreaked intense damage on universities, Haiti’s higher education sector has benefited from international efforts that have revamped not only buildings but helped reconstruct curricula.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE and KEITH NUTHALL

IT is more than 18 months since the earthquake that ravaged Haiti seriously damaged Toussaint L’Ouverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, notably its air traffic control tower, rendering it unusable. The airport suffered structural damage to its terminal building walls and there were some major electrical faults.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A HEAVY fuel oil-fired power plant supplying 30 MW of electricity to Haiti has started operations on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. The US dollars USD57 million plant was funded by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), South Korea’s Korea East-West Power Co, Ltd, and local investors.…

By Alyshah Hasham, International News Services

The UK is by no means an exception to this trend. A recent study from the University of Plymouth concluded that the most dangerous climate-change linked threat to Britain’s environmental health could be vector borne diseases (such as Leishmaniasis – carried by the sand fly) which could spread to new areas because of warming temperatures.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

HAITI: New university to be built away from earthquake devastation

Garry Pierre-Pierre

A completion date of January 2012 for a new university in Haiti has been announced by the president of the Dominican Republic Leonel Fernández. This new ‘University of Haiti’ will be built in the northern city of Cap Hatïen, costing US dollars USD30 million, fully funded by the neighbouring Dominican Republic’s government and business community.…

BY ALYSHAH HASHAM

AS negotiators at the recent United Nations climate change conference in Cancun wrapped up their work, one problem concentrating minds enough to secure a partial deal was the spread of disease on the coat-tails of global warming. Infectious diseases are spreading to regions where they were previously absent, driven by warmer temperatures and changing rainfall patterns.…

BY ALYSHAH HASHAM

AS negotiators at the recent United Nations climate change conference in Cancun wrapped up their work, one problem concentrating minds enough to secure a partial deal was the spread of disease on the coat-tails of global warming. Infectious diseases are spreading to regions where they were previously absent, driven by warmer temperatures and changing rainfall patterns.…

BY KEITN NUTHALL

RUSSIA is so corrupt, it is regarded as having more graft than earthquake-shattered Haiti, the 2010 corruption perceptions index of Transparency International has declared. It placed Russia at 154th out of 178 countries in its corruption rankings, level with failed narco-state Guinea-Bissau and worse than Haiti (146th) and Pakistan (143th).…

BY KEITN NUTHALL

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THE NORTH Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is taking the threat of cyberattacks on business and government computing networks so seriously, it is staging cyberwarfare trials. The world’s strongest military alliance in November held the Cyber Coalition 2010 exercise near Mons, Belgium, and remote locations to test cyber-attack agencies and NATO strategic decision making.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD, KARRYN MILLER, GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE, KEITH NUTHALL

FOR niche spirits, obscure can be good – and so products made in countries not renowned for their spirits production can gather export market cache. Latin America and the Caribbean are regions where effort by buyers can pay dividends.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

DEFINING a niche drink is an arbitrary matter and what may pass as niche today may well be considered mainstream tomorrow. Flavoured vodka, for instance, had a relatively specialised following in Europe until a few years ago – now it is classified as an official spirit drink under European Union (EU) regulations.…

WINNERS

TURKEY

This was the year when Turkey really came into its own. With a well-established and successful clothing and textile industry, supping Europe, Russia and the Middle East, its industry this year laid claim to becoming a fashion centre. August’s Istanbul Fashion Week caught a lot of global attention with 21 catwalk shows, an audience of 40,000, and more than 500 overseas guests.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

ON January 12, Haitian accountant Kenny Laforest, 32, was having a normal day in Port-au-Prince. He had just started driving home having left his office when the earthquake that devastated his country struck. Speaking to Accountancy Age from the Haitian capital, he recalled: "I had just finished working.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

MAJOR emerging markets Brazil and India have told the World Trade Organisation (WTO) they are fulfilling commitments to open their markets duty-free to the 49 poorest countries worldwide (called ‘least developed countries’ of LDC) mostly sub-Saharan African, Asian and Pacific islands.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE, EMMA JACKSON and ALAN OSBORN

THE DOORS of Little Europe and other high-end boutiques in Haiti’s ravaged capital city have not experienced much traffic since an earthquake with the magnitude of seven on the Richter scale struck in January.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

WHEN an earthquake of a magnitude of seven on the Richter scale struck Haiti in January, it transformed the poorest county in the Western Hemisphere to its largest construction site.

As the country’s leaders unveiled a US$14 billion reconstruction plan for the battered country, international excavation and construction companies, including some from Great Britain have lined up for contracts to rebuild the hundreds of commercial and residential properties that were destroyed.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

The property market of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince was decimated by the earthquake and has yet to even start recovering. Its entire central district can no longer really be called a business centre. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has estimated that 30,000 businesses have been lost in Haiti, with Port-au-Price suffering the brunt of the quake.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

WHEN an earthquake of a magnitude of seven on the Richter scale struck Haiti in January, it destroyed most of this 9 million population Caribbean country’s infrastructure, including ports and airports. Many businesses have suffered, including the tobacco sector, with many retail outlets ruined, especially in the capital Port-au-Prince whose central business district was shattered by the quake.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

WHEN last month’s earthquake flattened the tax office in Haiti, killing the director, many thought that it would take years to restore the country’s tax and accounting system. The headquarters of the Direction Générale de Impôts (DGI) was destroyed and its director general Jean Frantz Richard died.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

A CONTINUING flow of seriously injured people continue to provide deep challenges to nurses at the Port-au-Prince’s barely functioning hospitals, nearly two weeks after a massive earthquake overwhelmed medical staff.

We try to do the best we can," said Enid Paret, a nurse at the University Hospital, the Haitian capital’s largest, which was damaged by the quake but still operates.…

By Mitch Vandenborn, International News Services

As the international community converges on Haiti, many are fearful that the small Caribbean country will become another victim of promised international aid that falters amongst bickering and petty squabbles between donor countries and agencies.

But, in truth, this disaster could serve as a model for international aid done right, with large scale cooperation and organisation that not only relieves the immediate suffering of the Haitian people, but reestablishes the shattered remains of their infrastructure and society.

The European Union (EU) council on foreign affairs has already issued a statement asking for a “EU-wide response to post-emergency rehabilitation and recovery.”

The council also insisted on the need for an assessment on the “long-term development needs of Haiti, which makes full use of all resources, expertise and funding available from EU and Member States.”…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

Astride Auguste was late for an exam at Port-au-Prince’s Quiskeya University on that fateful Tuesday January 12, when the earthquake, or ‘the event’, as Haitians have come to call it happened.

Auguste, an undergraduate student in international affairs and management was nearby the campus when she felt the earth shook beneath her.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

Astride Auguste was late for an exam at Port-au-Prince’s Quiskeya University on that fateful Tuesday January 12, when the earthquake, or ‘the event’, as Haitians have come to call it happened.

Auguste, an undergraduate student in international affairs and management was nearby the campus when she felt the earth shook beneath her.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

HAITI’S troubled fishing industry has been dealt a severe blow by the earthquake that devastated its capital Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. The destruction of the city’s port facilities, warehouses, and distribution systems means that fish, once plentiful in markets, have for the time become a rare commodity, said Michel Chancy, the undersecretary for food at Haiti’s ministry of agriculture, which is responsible for fishing and aquaculture.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

THE EARTHQUAKE that shook Haiti to its core did not spare the country’s largest rum producer, Barbancourt. The plant, located in the La Plaine area of Port-au-Prince suffered extensive damage, according to Alain Duret, the company’s human resources director.…

BY MITCH

As the international community converges on Haiti, many are fearful that the small Caribbean country will become another victim of promised international aid that falters amongst bickering and petty squabbles between donor countries and agencies.

But, in truth, this disaster could serve as a model for international aid done right, with large scale cooperation and organisation that not only relieves the immediate suffering of the Haitian people, but reestablishes the shattered remains of their infrastructure and society.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EARTHQUAKE that has ravaged Haiti seriously damaged the air traffic control tower at Toussaint L’Ouverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, rendering it unusable. Denis Chagnon public information officer for the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) said: "It’s out of commission and non-operational."…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A HAITIAN consortium E-Power SA will receive US$30 million in investment through the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation to build a 30-megawatt heavy fuel oil power plant, reducing the Caribbean state’s acute power shortages. US$14 million of this will be syndicated through Dutch development bank FMO.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

ANTI-CORRUPTION organisation Transparency International has warned that the perceived level of corruption in Britain significantly worsened in the past year. In its latest international rankings, it said that the UK was now the 16th least corrupt nation, with a rating of 7.7 (10 being cleanest and zero highly corrupt).…

BY KENCHO WANGDI, in Thimphu, Bhutan; JUHEL BROWNE, in Port of Spain, Trinidad; BILL CORCORAN, in Johannesburg; and KEITH NUTHALL

THE RISING price in oil has hit the prosperity of many companies, communities and countries, but it is the world’s poorest people, living in what the United Nations calls least developed countries that are suffering the most.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE WORLD’S poorest countries are suffering from a punishing exodus of their most talented, experienced and educated citizens a UN Conference on Trade and Development reports claims. Around 1 million skilled persons from officially-designated Least Developed Countries (LDCs) lived and worked in developed countries in 2004, a brain drain of 15%, considering the 6.6 million LDC citizens with university-level educations.…

BY SUZANNE KOELEGA, in Sint Maarten
AS leaders of various Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries and US President George Bush debated regional security in Washington DC in June, Caribbean nations continue to struggle with serious commercial crime that threatens their regional stability.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States’ diplomatic service is surely the largest and best resourced international network of experts in the world, and this is born out by the depth of the narcotics strategy report – or INCSR to use its acronym.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE CARICOM Caribbean economic community has announced Haiti can access the Trinidad & Tobago Petroleum Fund, established in 2004 by the oil-exporting twin island nation to help neighbouring countries deal with high international oil prices.

ENDS…

BY WESLEY GIBBINGS, in Port of Spain, Trinidad

WITH its multiple small jurisdictions, offshore tax havens and proximity to both drug producing countries in Latin America and the United States, the Caribbean has always been a focus of global anti-money laundering efforts.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD’S premier anti-corruption organisation Transparency International, has again hailed northern Europe as the region most free of graft, bribes and kickbacks. Such financial crime is rarest in Iceland, says the 2005 corruption rankings from the German group, with Finland and New Zealand tying at second place, Denmark, fourth, Sweden sixth, and Norway eighth.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GLOBAL corruption watchdog Transparency International has confirmed Britain’s place as one of the world’s cleaner countries, ranking it 11th in its annual league table of government probity. In a report containing few surprises, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Iceland and Singapore were lauded has having the most honest governments, while the graft-ridden administrations of Nigeria, Bangladesh and Haiti were bottom of the table.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NOBODY likes to be on a blacklist, especially one written by the American government. But every year, the US state department issues a comprehensive rogues gallery of countries involved in the narcotics trade and related criminal problems. One surprising entrant: the United States.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) and 16 Caribbean countries have launched negotiations to strike a trade deal by 2008, that should boost Jamaican bauxite exports into Europe. The mineral is already the eastern Caribbean’s largest non-food export to the EU, (eight per cent of all the region’s foreign sales being aluminium-related products – worth around Euro 223 million in 2003).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) and 16 Caribbean countries have launched negotiations to strike a 2008 trade deal, that should boost rum exports into Europe. The spirit is already the eastern Caribbean’s largest export to the EU, (11 per cent of sales – worth around Euro 320 million in 2003), with import quota restrictions removed from 2000.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN has been given a relatively clean bill of health in the latest Transparency International corruption rankings, being viewed as joint-11th least-corrupt country in the world, sharing its billing with Canada and Luxembourg. Finland was the most honest place in which to do business said the pressure group’s survey, followed by Iceland and the Denmark plus New Zealand at joint third.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRANCE’S Suez water company and the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) have launched a joint drinking water improvements programme that will provide around Euro 300,000 in its first three years and will initially concentrate on the Volga-Caspian region.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE TRAFFICKING of endangered species, and other environmental crimes such as smuggling pollutants, is a billion dollar business says the Milan-based United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, (UNICRI), which has published a study on these modern scourges.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ENVIRONMENTAL crimes are in many ways the most damaging of offences, given that they can harm millions of people, whether through damaging the ozone layer, increasing pollution levels or damaging biodiversity. The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, (UNICRI), has published a study on this modern scourge.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ENVIRONMENTAL crimes are in many ways the most damaging of offences, given that they can harm millions of people, whether through damaging the ozone layer, increasing pollution levels or damaging biodiversity. They are also hard to pinpoint and investigate and it is for these reasons that the Milan-based United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, (UNICRI), has published a study on this modern scourge.…