As part of the constitutional requirement relating to the filing of the report of activities carried out during the fiscal year 2013-2014 and the principle of accountability, Thomas Jacques, Minister of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development (MARDDR) has made available a detailed document of 134 pages on the Ministry's activities during that fiscal year.

In his introduction, the Minister Jacques summarizes the main points of its record saying that "the overall objective for this exercise was to ensure that the agricultural sector maintains the pace of growth to 4.5% in order to contribute to the improvement of national food security and to increase revenue of rural workers, prerequisites for the improvement of living conditions and well-being of the Haitian people."

To achieve this, the Ministry of Agriculture has benefited for the 2013-2014 period a total budget allocation of nearly 7 billion gourdes (6,921,275,737 Gdes) including operation and investment.

The part devoted to investment accounted for just over 6 billion gourdes (Gde 6,142,354,404), representing 89% of the budget allocated to the MARNDR. It was intended to fund 7 programs, declined in 72 projects, including 40 funded solely or in exchange, by the State Treasury funds. The others were financed by external resources.

Finally, the Minister has indicated in its balance sheet, it was only possible to engage or spend a little more than 4 billion gourdes (4,076,840,160 Gde), 65% of the budget.

Stressing that "This investment has helped strengthen productive infrastructure and to ensure that thousands of producers can undertake agricultural activities during the two main seasons Winter and Spring. Mitigation of major natural hazards and environmental protection have had a central place among the actions that were taken, this in the perspective of sustaining the latter. The impact on unemployment is undoubtedly, in fact, interventions have generated tens of thousands of temporary jobs that allowed people to earn additional income off-farm."

In addition, the Minister emphasized the collective nature of the preparation of this report "Under the authority of General Management, a Review Commission was created. The preparations for this balance sheet followed a participatory approach. First, the Commission has developed a set of tools for collecting information. In addition, a workshop brought together the Agricultural Department Directors, Technical Directors at the central level and the Development projects coordinators to validate and enrich the data collected by the Studies and Planning Unit (UEP)."

Download the document (2013-2014) [PDF 134 pages] : https://www.haitilibre.com/docs/marndr_bilan-agricole_2013-2014.pdf

HL/ HaitiLibre