ARTICLE - NAT'L AGENCY OF RECONSTRUCTION

AFTER THE IHRC "THE NATIONAL AGENCY OF THE RECONSTRUCTION"
(Haiti Libre) -

Last Friday on the sidelines of the Eighth Meeting of the Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF), André Emercier Georges, Minister of Economy and Finance and also President of the Steering Committee of the HRF, announced that following the end the mandate of the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (IHRC) in late October 2011 and its non-renewal, a new entity should be designated by the Government of Haiti to act as an interlocutor with the HRF. Recall that the absence of the Interim Commission, was blocking the work of the HRF, who is responsible for mobilizing, allocating and coordinating the contributions from international donors, based on projects that were submitted by the Commission.

He proposed that, temporarily, this absence is filled by the Ministry of Planning and External Cooperation (MPCE), a choice that must be validated once the procedures have been established and approved. The MPCE could take over the IHRC to receive, approve and submit funding requests and serve as a bridge with the HRF.

However, he stated that the MPCE is not a Ministry of execution but of coordination, monitoring, evaluation and planning, indicating that a bill was in preparation for the creation and implementation of the "National Agency of the Reconstruction" as planned, at the end of the mandate of the IHRC, in the Action Plan for Recovery and Development of Haiti (PARDH). He stated that this Haitian agency, will have a mission much larger than that of the IHRC, since it will be involved in the implementation of programs and projects.

For his part Josef Leitmann, HRF manager, said that the fund had so far received $396 million and that after the allocation of funds for 19 projects, the fund had currently $120 million unallocated, available through the new process.