When all the spotlight is on the management of the Covid-19, the gourde continues its dizzying fall.
It takes between 113 and 115 gourdes to get a US dollar on the market this Monday, June 8, 2020. The rate varies according to the amount, the place, the mind of the buyer or the mood of the seller.
In 30 years, the exchange rate has increased by more than 1,000%! In 1990, about 8 gourdes per dollar were needed. 10 years later, in 2000, we spent between 19 and 20 gourdes against a dollar from Uncle Sam.
The gourde had sometimes fallen under the administration of ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide after political events before stabilized the Haitian currency.
At the end of the mandate of the late President René Préval, the US dollar was exchanged for 40 gourdes. From Michel Martelly, to provisional president Jocelerme Privert, to Jovenel Moïse, the fall has never been as brutal and rapid as before. The trend is, it seems, definitive. The Haitian state, the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Bank of the Republic of Haiti do little more to change the situation.
Each economist has his own approach to explain the situation: political instability, budget deficit, speculation by commercial banks, weak national production, poor economic choice … Whatever the explanation, the irregularities remain. Whether there is economic activity or not, the national currency continues to fall. The central bank’s measures to inject millions of dollars into the foreign exchange market had only very short-term palliative effects and did not lead to the desired results.
These cyclical measures may have delayed the collapse by a few days, which the authorities are struggling to stabilize, but no more. In this “dollarized” economy, each time the gourdedepreciates, it is the purchasing power of people that diminishes, the quality of life that decreases, especially that of the millions of people who sink a little more in misery, in particular those which do not depend on the transfers of money of the foreigner or the trade indexed to the dollar even when the prices would be indicated in gourdes.Continue reading.