First modification:
After a week of the total closure of the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, Dominican merchants and producers, who sold their products to the neighboring country, are beginning to see the economic consequences; Some went out to give away their animals because they do not want to lose money feeding them, without having a sure buyer, and others already have their accounts in the red, since they made credit sales with the Haitians and they no longer have a way to reach them.
“I had to give away my chickens so as not to lose money feeding them,” concludes Tomás Liberato, after knocking on the doors of several of his neighbors to give them one or two of the animals with which he previously earned money.
Like him, at least a dozen merchants have done the same, preferring that low-income people have the animals, rather than investing money in food to keep them alive, without being sure that they will soon be able to sell them to someone.
“We have million-dollar losses, because when the border was closed, without notifying you, we had merchandise on that side. We are an association and we all have losses. We are bankrupt. There were 200 or so chickens left, a hundred and something have died. Today I made the decision to give it to poor people,” Liberato told the EFE agency.
With the closure of the border with Haiti on September 15, the binational market of Dajabajón, the border city where every week, at least 20,000 Haitians crossed the international bridge to buy products and resell them in their country, disappeared.
Now, that bridge is only open to allow the return of hundreds of Haitians leaving the Dominican Republic, with no clear date for when they might return.
“Imagine here on the border you only live from that market. We will have to emigrate from here because we are not going to let ourselves die. You live from that, from the market. 80 or 90 percent of us live from that,” Liberato said.
The border was closed by decision of Dominican President Luis Abinader seven days ago. For the president, the construction of an irrigation canal that Haiti is doing on a common river is “an act of provocation” and “violates the existing agreements” that both countries maintain.
Haiti, on the other hand, argues that it is a private project by local farmers, and the canal would help alleviate a drought affecting the community known as Juana Méndez.
The Dominican Government has had to come to the aid of producers who live off sales from Haitian buyers. Among these measures, Abinader’s administration has said that producers’ debts will be restructured through the Agricultural Bank and they will be granted zero-rate loans, “as well as marketing, via the Price Stabilization Institute (Inespre). ), of the products that are not selling due to the closure of the border,” the authorities published in a statement.
The Masacre River, named for an old colonial dispute between Spain and France, has witnessed historical conflicts between both countries, including the 1937 massacre of Haitians by order of dictator Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.
With EFE
#Economy #Dominican #merchants #suffer #consequences #border #closure #Haiti