A new poster wrote me a private question to ask my opinion of what I thought might be some good businesses to set up perhaps along the border area... which country was easier to start a business in, etc,
Since I don't know him, and since there may be others who are interested in this subject, and since I have given this some thought, I decided to post publicly.
First, it is far easier to set up a business in the Dominican Republic. It takes about two years to legally set up a business in Haiti. Posters can query poster PedroChemical who does run a business in Haiti, but it is not for the faint hearted.
Second, the one economically viable business that I have seen in Haiti that is not readily available is small solar panels for cell phone chargers.Over the last few years, the Irish phone company, Digicel has managed to put cell towers in place and now about two thirds of Haiti has cell phones. But most of Haiti does not have electricity. Small solar panels can charge a bank of cell phones at a time. I have seen them working in a small settlement. It is a good source of income. So selling them from the DR into Haiti, would be a good business
MORE lucratively, setting up a factory to manufacture them on the border ..... and I do have contacts with a US firm who has a turn key operation but this will require probably a World Bank or IDB loan in the range of 30 million so is not a small business venture.
In the small business line.... there are more opportunities in Haiti... such as the odd fact that LAc Azuei on the other side of Lago Enriquillo is full of Tilapia but no one has any fishing boats... or capacity for fish drying.. the area is within an hour of Port au Prince.. and the fact is that 300,000 people wake up each morning with nothing to eat and have to jive and hustle for something to eat and usually end up eating imported corn flakes because they do not have the time to cook the rice and beans.... but if perhaps they had dried fish?---
And, of course, all the fruit bearing trees that are needed to rebuild Haiti are growing here so that a vivero export business might end up being very lucrative. Any enterprise like this would certainly gain some assistance from some NGOs and that would be the way to do it... have a private-public aspect, get the Haitian-Dominican diaspora involved, get school kids involved.
There are lots of projects that talk about reforestation but there is one project in Haiti, the ORE project in the South, which has shown that if you can give a farmer a producing mango and an avocado, he is self supporting.
Now I have written stories of women who make a good living just buying clothes at the northern market and selling them in SD but that takes a good eye and contacts and is really about contacts...
And as Mike Fisher said, earning a thousand pesos a day here is doing good, so I am suggesting that anyone is going to get rich or even survive on this..
I think that the area from San Juan de Maguana to Elias Pinas across to Belledare is amazingly beautiful and it is a fertile valley. I suspect that the reason that it is so poor is that it was Haiti's front door and so the DR turned its back to it.
There are tax incentives for DR businesses to open up on the border.
I think that there are lots of tourism possibilities for small quiet guest houses .. for helping farmers learn how to take in guests, for doing tours to more remote areas....
But mostly, really, one has to do a business that one loves, that one is good it....... because well,,, really, the best one is going to do here in a business is survive....
Since I don't know him, and since there may be others who are interested in this subject, and since I have given this some thought, I decided to post publicly.
First, it is far easier to set up a business in the Dominican Republic. It takes about two years to legally set up a business in Haiti. Posters can query poster PedroChemical who does run a business in Haiti, but it is not for the faint hearted.
Second, the one economically viable business that I have seen in Haiti that is not readily available is small solar panels for cell phone chargers.Over the last few years, the Irish phone company, Digicel has managed to put cell towers in place and now about two thirds of Haiti has cell phones. But most of Haiti does not have electricity. Small solar panels can charge a bank of cell phones at a time. I have seen them working in a small settlement. It is a good source of income. So selling them from the DR into Haiti, would be a good business
MORE lucratively, setting up a factory to manufacture them on the border ..... and I do have contacts with a US firm who has a turn key operation but this will require probably a World Bank or IDB loan in the range of 30 million so is not a small business venture.
In the small business line.... there are more opportunities in Haiti... such as the odd fact that LAc Azuei on the other side of Lago Enriquillo is full of Tilapia but no one has any fishing boats... or capacity for fish drying.. the area is within an hour of Port au Prince.. and the fact is that 300,000 people wake up each morning with nothing to eat and have to jive and hustle for something to eat and usually end up eating imported corn flakes because they do not have the time to cook the rice and beans.... but if perhaps they had dried fish?---
And, of course, all the fruit bearing trees that are needed to rebuild Haiti are growing here so that a vivero export business might end up being very lucrative. Any enterprise like this would certainly gain some assistance from some NGOs and that would be the way to do it... have a private-public aspect, get the Haitian-Dominican diaspora involved, get school kids involved.
There are lots of projects that talk about reforestation but there is one project in Haiti, the ORE project in the South, which has shown that if you can give a farmer a producing mango and an avocado, he is self supporting.
Now I have written stories of women who make a good living just buying clothes at the northern market and selling them in SD but that takes a good eye and contacts and is really about contacts...
And as Mike Fisher said, earning a thousand pesos a day here is doing good, so I am suggesting that anyone is going to get rich or even survive on this..
I think that the area from San Juan de Maguana to Elias Pinas across to Belledare is amazingly beautiful and it is a fertile valley. I suspect that the reason that it is so poor is that it was Haiti's front door and so the DR turned its back to it.
There are tax incentives for DR businesses to open up on the border.
I think that there are lots of tourism possibilities for small quiet guest houses .. for helping farmers learn how to take in guests, for doing tours to more remote areas....
But mostly, really, one has to do a business that one loves, that one is good it....... because well,,, really, the best one is going to do here in a business is survive....