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Haiti Using Funds from PetroCaribe to Finance Reconstruction

"The cooperation with Venezuela is the most important in Haiti right now in terms of impact, direct impact," President Martelly told the Associated Press in December. The most important channel for this cooperation is the PetroCaribe agreement, which most Caribbean countries are currently a part of and which the government of René Préval joined in 2006. Through the agreement Venezuela finances part of Haiti’s fuel import bill, allowing for a portion to be paid up front and the remainder to be used as a loan with a long maturity and low rates. The funds made available through PetroCaribe are, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) explains, “under the control of the central government”. This makes PetroCaribe assistance drastically different from aid provided by traditional donors, which by and large bypasses the government. In fact, traditional budget support to the Haitian state was lower last year than the year before the earthquake.

Over the duration of the agreement, which began in 2008, Venezuela has provided nearly $1.9 billion (PDF) in petroleum products, with over $800 million being paid up front. Following the earthquake, Venezuela cancelled some $400 million of PetroCaribe debt, yet with large disbursements since the earthquake Haiti still owes some $580 million. While significant resources have already been spent, Haiti maintains a balance of $350 million in PetroCaribe funds.

The government of Haiti has predictably turned to one of its only pools of un-restricted funds to finance reconstruction and development programs. The IMF notes that the GOH has “committed to only use PetroCaribe resources to finance growth-enhancing investment projects.” The spending with PetroCaribe funds represents a significant portion of capital spending undertaken by the central government. In the latest IMF review of Haiti’s economy, the IMF estimates that PetroCaribe funds will account for nearly half of domestically-financed capital spending in 2012, amounting to 4.7 percent of GDP. While foreign financed capital spending still overshadows this (it is projected to be 14.9 percent of GDP in 2012), the PetroCaribe funds are unique in that they are directly under the control of the government.

The reconstruction projects financed with PetroCaribe funds have come under scrutiny recently as allegations emerged that Martelly received some $2.5 million in kickbacks related to contracts awarded by the Haitian government. Yet it is also true that the PetroCaribe funds represent some of the largest infrastructure related investments in Haiti since the earthquake. Overall, $380 million has been awarded to firms for infrastructure-related work (PDF) and the most recent data shows that over 73 percent has already been spent. For comparison, the Government Accountability Office found in November that of $412 million in infrastructure projects approved by USAID, only 0.8 percent had been disbursed. It is no wonder then that Martelly told the AP that Venezuela aid stacked up favorably with US assistance, which often takes more time:

"Sometimes for a simple project, it might take too long for the project to happen," he said. "If you're asking me which one flows better, which one is easier, I'll tell you Venezuela."

Amazingly, despite the clear benefits of the PetroCaribe agreement for Haiti, a steady supply of oil, concessional financing, unrestricted funds, it almost never happened.

Jake Johnston / April 17, 2012

Article Artículo

Educating David Brooks on the Budget

I enjoy teaching, I used to do it for a living. So I am happy to take on the job of teaching David Brooks about the budget so that he does not consistently embarrass himself in his NYT columns.

Today he is trying to give us a balanced assessment of President Obama's case for his budget. He just puts the facts on the table. Brooks tells us, "I’m not going to pass my own comprehensive judgment on this here."

The problem is that the facts are not quite as Brooks lays them out. To start with, Brooks seems more interested in scaring people than informing them. He tells readers:

"I’ve based that argument on certain facts. President Obama’s 2013 budget will add roughly $6 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next 10 years. By 2022, Americans will be spending $915 billion on interest payments on the debt alone, a number far larger than that year’s entire defense budget."

That sounds really really bad. After all, $915 billion is a really big number, can we afford that? The way that you look to answer that question is by comparing the spending to the projected size of the economy. GDP is projected to be $24.7 trillion in 2022. The projected interest spending in that year is then 3.7 percent of GDP. That is somewhat higher than 3.3 percent of GDP we hit in 1991, but not hugely so.

Furthermore, if the Federal Reserve Board continued to hold the $3 trillion in assets it has purchased to boost the economy, much of this interest would be refunded to the Treasury. Currently, the Fed is refunding about $80 billion a year to the Treasury, or a bit more than 0.5 percent of GDP. Its interest earnings would be projected to rise when interest rates go higher. (The Fed could raise reserve requirements to offset the potential inflationary impact of the additional reserves in the banking system.)

[ CORRECTION: Brooks is right here. He said "that" year, not "last" year.] Comparing projected interest payments in 2022 to last year's defense spending is a joke. Serious people do not compare nominal sums that are more than a decade apart. This is because serious people have heard of inflation. Hey, we're spending 8 times as much on the military today as we did at the height of World War II. This is true using nominal dollars, but obviously an absurd comparison.]

Dean Baker / April 17, 2012

Article Artículo

Government

Workers

Low-Wage Workers By State
In a recent CEPR brief, we examined the decades-long rise in the educational attainment of low-wage workers at the national level. The table and figures below (or after the jump) show this same educational upgrading is evident across all 51 states (includ

Janelle Jones and John Schmitt / April 13, 2012