In a Port-au-Prince warehouse loaded with tarps, plywood, corrugated roofing, nails and other building supplies, company owner Patrick Brun says he had hoped to get contracts from the billions of dollars in international aid promised to Haiti. His 40-year-old company, Chabuma S.A., sells cement blocks, doors, sand bags and other materials for international companies. But what he wants is a more significant role in his country's recovery, which is why he says he keeps bidding — without success — for U.S. government contracts. "You can imagine that if we can't win the contracts ourselves, we become totally dependent on foreign companies and nonprofits, and there is not much hope in that," he said. "We may not have the extended capacity of a U.S. company, but we are respectable. We keep good books and records, we have foreign suppliers, we have good credit, we pay our taxes and our customs dues."
There are many reasons for the disparity. Among them, US AID is more familiar with some U.S. contractors and gave out some no-bid contracts out of urgency, and fears the corruption that is rife in Haiti. On the Haitian side, there is a limited understanding of U.S. government practices. But using foreign aid to give local companies contracts is one of the most important aspects of reconstruction, says Clare Lockhart, chief executive officer of the Institute for State Effectiveness. "You can't just provide manual jobs. You need to contract with companies so that the middle tier managers and owners of companies have a stake in the legal system and rule of law, and ultimately a stake in the success of their political system and their economy," she says. The contractors, Development Alternatives Inc. of Bethesda, Maryland, and Chemonics International of Washington D.C., which received more than $31 million each in no-bid contracts, responded to AP in an email saying that together with several other contractors, they had employed 25,000 Haitians a day. Now, they said, 10 months after the earthquake, "priorities have evolved beyond a focus on temporary employment," a program that has paid Haitian workers $18 million in wages. The results in Afghanistan are encouraging: A recent study found that 37 percent of $2 billion in annual international aid is now being used to buy locally-produced Afghan goods and services, up from 31 percent a few years ago. The AP review focused on contracts from the U.S. government, which spent an immediate $1.1 billion in U.S. humanitarian assistance after the earthquake, and promised another $1.15 billion for reconstruction. In November, the first $120 million of the pledged reconstruction funds were tranferred to the World Bank-run Haiti Reconstruction Fund, according to the State Department. In addition to government aid, more than $1 billion has come from nonprofit charities, most of which try to buy local, said Samuel A. Worthington, president of InterAction, the largest alliance of U.S.-based international nongovernmental organizations. He represents nonprofits managing about 90 percent of the U.S. donations that were directed to Haiti after the quake.
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