… some better news from Haiti

Mindful of the past hurricanes, the 2010 earthquake, cholera, chikugunya, Dengue, the seemingly endless afflictions which the Haitian people have suffered, John Stifler points us to an assessment in the Florida newspapers, with some surprise, of the impact of Covid -19

Exchange rate gyrations steadying. Earlier this year there was a damaging fall in the value of the gourde against the dollar (115:1). The Bank of Haiti stepped in to fix the rate substantially below (55:1) the free market rate. The value of dollars sent home from the Haitian diaspora, about one third of national income, plummeted. The central bank has yielded to this distress by raising the reference rate to a level (70:1) near that which pertained before the turbulence began.