PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – On the edge of Haiti’s earthquake-ravaged capital, a freshly-painted square blue and gray building dabs a bright sign of renewal on an otherwise depressing palette of destruction.
The brand-new plant containing electricity generators is the “power house” of E-Power, a $56.7 million Haitian-South Korean private investment that has forged ahead despite the chaos inflicted by the January 12 earthquake which wrecked the coastal city and killed up to 300,000 people.
Standing not far from Port-au-Prince’s biggest slum and in sight of blue and white tents of quake survivors’ camps, the plant is a torch-bearer of private sector enterprise that Haiti’s government and its aid partners hope can light a path to sustainable recovery for the crippled Caribbean state.
“We hope this will be an example to others,” said E-Power’s CEO Carl-Auguste Boisson, who said the 30 Megawatt (MW) power project was conceived in 2004 and would come on line in January, burning heavy fuel. Key equipment was delivered just weeks after the quake, as port installations reopened.
“Everyone was telling us: ‘No, it’s not possible, we have to go to Dominican Republic and unload there and bring it around by truck’. We said: ‘No, we want to unload everything in Port-au-Prince’, and we did, without incident,” Boisson said.
As the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation struggles to rise up from one of the most destructive natural catastrophes in recent history, Haiti and the huge international aid operation assisting it are looking to private enterprise and investment to be the powerhouse of reconstruction.
If this is forthcoming, government officials hope for an 8-10 per cent growth bounce-back next year, after a 7 per cent contraction this year due to the quake impact. But calls for private sector support have become more urgent as Haiti’s leaders realize the limits of institutional international aid.
Despite $11 billion pledged by donors to help “build back better” over the next decade, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told Reuters the money, while undoubtedly generous, would simply not be enough to rebuild a new Haiti from the ruins.
