Thu, Jun 03, 2004 page9

• Aristide's ouster hasn't filled any Haitian bellies

  Many Haitians rely on cheap rice for their one meal a day. But a decrease in global rice supplies has pushed prices up, and graft and looting haven't helped

  • By Time Weiner / NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  One lesson of life in Haiti is to never say things cannot get any worse. They can, and they have.

  People say they have less money, less food, and less hope since the start of the February revolt that toppled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

  For most Haitians, this has nothing to do with last week's deadly floods, which left 1,000 dead and 1,600 missing in Haiti, according to Monday's official government estimate.

  It has to do with the price of rice.

  The cost of rice has soared in the past four months, and to live in Haiti, one must have rice.

  On the Rue de Miracles, one of the capital's biggest sidewalk markets, where thousands buy and sell the necessities of life, people talk of little else. Every conversation that starts with politics ends with the price of rice.

  Many Haitians eat one meal a day. The main course is rice, and the price of a 110-pound sack doubled, from US$22.50 to US$45, between late January and early May. That price has dropped to about US$37 in the last few weeks, but it is still too high, said Clermathe Baron, 29, who sells the big white sacks across the street from the Haitian customs office, near the port.

  "Life for the people of Haiti was better under Aristide because rice was less expensive," said Baron, not a big fan of the former president, as an American military helicopter hummed overhead.

  "Even though it's more expensive now, I make the same as I did before," she said. "These high prices are not to my advantage. They're not to anyone's advantage, except maybe a few big importers and a few people in the Customs House. They always seem to have money."

  less and less

  People who buy rice by the pound say the price also doubled, and it has stayed that high.

  "We have less and less to eat," said Nadia Casmir, 21, who sells crackers, cookies and powdered milk from a sidewalk stall, and lives with her mother, aunt and three nieces and nephews. "Things were better before. I'm not making a living. I've had to raise my prices, but people have less money, so they can't buy what we are selling."

  Aristide, unsurprisingly, agrees that things have gotten worse since he was overthrown on Feb. 29.

  "The level of suffering has dramatically increased in Haiti," he said, before leaving a temporary exile in Jamaica and arriving on Monday in South Africa, which offered him refuge. Aristide, who says he is still Haiti's elected leader, received a head-of-state's welcome in Johannesburg from South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki.

  But Haitian businessmen say Aristide's government kept the price of rice down through corruption.

  One leading importer said an Aristide crony received a near-exclusive concession on rice imports and evaded customs duties. This evasion allowed the rice concessionaire to cut about US$3 a bag off the market price, pass some of the savings on to the market, and pocket the rest.

  "It was kind of a monopoly" under Aristide, said Danielle St. Lot, Haiti's new minister of commerce.

  The price of rice in Haiti now depends on global, national, and local political forces, say government officials and private businessmen.

  Haiti used to grow its own rice. But its agriculture has collapsed over the past two decades, crushed by poverty, environmental destruction and foreign imports. While rice production crashed, demand soared: Haiti's population has grown from 5 million to 8 million in the past 20 years.

  Today, "Haiti is importing everything that the country can produce," St. Lot said. "The deterioration of the economy, years of bad governance without any policy for agriculture, and the day-to-day problems of life we now see reflected in the price of rice."

  Eighty percent of the rice imported by Haiti comes from the US, chiefly fields in Arkansas, Louisiana and California -- more than 300,000 tonnes last year. American rice is the most expensive in the world, St. Lot said.

  "The problem is serious," she said. "The price on the international market is growing every day."

  American and global stocks of rice are down, driving prices up, in some part because of American military and foreign policies.

  "The American government has been buying a lot of rice for Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq," said Jean-Michel Cherubin, a leading Haitian importer of rice, sugar and beans.

  from bad to worse

  International aid agencies, like the UN World Food Program and Catholic Relief Services, which receive US government support, do what they can to ease Haiti's hunger. The UN sought US$35 million in emergency funds for Haiti from foreign governments in March; it remains US$26 million shy of the goal.

  Things were bad before the flood, and now at least 75,000 survivors affected by the deluge face a food emergency that will go on for many months.

  Haiti -- its ports in particular -- is a dangerous place to do business. This remains true despite the soon-to-depart American-led military force sent to provide security and stability after Aristide fell, and despite the efforts of the interim government, which has good intentions but almost no money. Theft and crime raise the market price of rice by cutting the supply lines.

  "People have been stealing rice and selling it in the market here in La Saline," said US Marine Captain Sean Connally, part of a force sent to secure the commercial harbor of Port-au-Prince, which abuts La Saline, one of Haiti's roughest neighborhoods. Four cargo containers were looted on Monday morning, Haitian officials said.

  This has been going on since the day Aristide fell.

  "There was lots of looting of commercial warehouses where rice was stocked," Jean-Claude Paulvin, president of a Haitian economists association said. "Boats couldn't come into the port to deliver the rice."

  The damage done to businesses, warehouses, and commercial property during the anti-Aristide rebellion ran to tens of millions of dollars.

  Now Haiti's government has a police force of roughly 2,500 men, a force whose cars and weapons were stolen during the chaos that followed Aristide's departure. The government lacks the money to rebuild the force or secure the ports.

  Starting on June 1, the security of Haiti will start being handed over from the US-led force to a UN coalition whose soldiers have barely started arriving. A formal transfer of command is set for June 20; the last American soldier leaves on June 30.

  All these forces -- global politics, international markets, the woes of Haiti's farmers and businessmen, the correlation of military powers -- weigh heavily on Baron, the rice seller, and her customers.

  "Because of the political situation, I pay more for everything, for all the necessities of life, including rice," she said. "Life's not better for me. It's worse now. It's not good for us poor people. The little money we have is not enough to fight the forces of commerce."

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