By Pas­cal Fletcher, Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6294UX20100310

MIAMI (Reuters) — Rebuild­ing Haiti after its cat­a­strophic earth­quake should gen­er­ate major con­tracts for pri­vate com­pa­nies spe­cial­iz­ing in con­struc­tion, logis­tics, trans­port and secu­rity, but U.S. exec­u­tives say they need a clear recon­struc­tion strat­egy to shape their busi­ness plans.

Pri­vate sec­tor firms that focus on post-conflict or dis­as­ter relief oper­a­tions gath­ered at a meet­ing in Miami this week to con­sider the busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties offered by Haiti’s recov­ery from the Jan­u­ary 12 quake that dev­as­tated the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince and sur­round­ing towns.

With Haiti’s gov­ern­ment say­ing up to 300,000 peo­ple may have died, some econ­o­mists are call­ing the Hait­ian quake the dead­liest nat­ural dis­as­ter in mod­ern times. Relief experts and busi­ness lead­ers agree the mam­moth task of rebuild­ing what was already the West­ern Hemisphere’s poor­est state will be impos­si­ble with­out pri­vate sec­tor participation.

“I don’t think they have any option but to get pri­vate com­pa­nies in to help recon­struct Haiti,” Kevin Lumb, CEO of London-based Global Invest­ment Sum­mits Ltd, which orga­nized the Haiti Recon­struc­tion meet­ing in Miami, told Reuters.

“I think it opens up a great deal of busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. Most of their infra­struc­ture is destroyed, their roads, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, build­ings, it’s obvi­ously affected water sup­ply, elec­tric­ity, so that all needs rebuild­ing,” Lumb said.

The Miami sum­mit was also orga­nized by the Inter­na­tional Peace Oper­a­tions Asso­ci­a­tion, a trade group of com­pa­nies work­ing in con­flict, post-conflict and dis­as­ter zones.

IPOA Pres­i­dent Doug Brooks cited $13 bil­lion to $14 bil­lion as esti­mates of the scale of dam­age inflicted by the Hait­ian quake, which could pro­vide some mea­sure of the busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties cre­ated by the recon­struc­tion effort.

Brooks called the Miami meet­ing a “nuts and bolts con­fer­ence” bring­ing together ser­vice providers, major human­i­tar­ian groups and other stake­hold­ers in Haiti’s rebuild­ing. The aim was to fit needs to poten­tial con­tract oppor­tu­ni­ties ahead of an inter­na­tional donors’ con­fer­ence for Haiti sched­uled for March 31 in New York.

“When the poli­cies come down and the money starts flow­ing for the recon­struc­tion, we’ll be ready to go,” Brooks said.

Com­pa­nies look­ing for busi­ness at the Haiti recon­struc­tion meet­ing included Georgia-based Har­bor Homes LLC, which offers self-assembled Per­maShel­ter houses for those left home­less by the quake, and Virginia-based Agility Logis­tics, which already sup­plies food rations to U.N. peace­keep­ing troops in Somalia.

LOOKING FOR “MASTER PLAN”

More than one mil­lion Haitians were left home­less and dis­placed by the Jan­u­ary quake and Har­bor Homes’ Richard Riv­ette said his com­pany could pro­vide eas­ily assem­bled, storm– and quake-resistant gal­va­nized steel homes to cre­ate the new vil­lages expected to be set up out­side of Port-au-Prince.

But he and other exec­u­tives at the Miami meet­ing said they needed to have from the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment and its relief part­ners a clearer idea of the planned rebuild­ing strategy.

“With­out a mas­ter plan, it’s hard to cost esti­mate it,” said Rivette.

“I think everyone’s look­ing for the direc­tion, where’s it going to go, how’s it going to work,” said Agility Logis­tics’ Thomas Short­ley, who runs the firm’s busi­ness with the United Nations.

Other speak­ers said any sur­vivors’ reset­tle­ment or relo­ca­tion pro­gram could be bedev­iled by land own­er­ship issues. “Land rights are the ele­phant in the room,” said Ian Rid­ley of World Vision Inter­na­tional, an aid group.

Weather fore­cast­ers are already pre­dict­ing a more active than nor­mal Atlantic hur­ri­cane sea­son in 2010 and storm-swept Haiti could face a fresh human­i­tar­ian dis­as­ter if the hun­dreds of thou­sands of quake home­less are not under ade­quate shel­ter by the time the sea­son starts on June 1.

Polit­i­cal ana­lysts and aid work­ers say that social unrest — a fea­ture of the cycle of poverty, cor­rup­tion and vio­lence that has dogged Haiti for decades — is a also major risk if employ­ment and shel­ter solu­tions are not found quickly.

“It will not take long before some kind of civil unrest occurs,” said Derell Grif­fith of Sabre Inter­na­tional, a secu­rity com­pany, refer­ring to quake sur­vivors’ impa­tience over delays in relief efforts.

Present too at the Miami meet­ing was the U.S. gov­ern­ment insurer and lender Over­seas Pri­vate Invest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. “Haiti has become a very strong pri­or­ity for the U.S. gov­ern­ment right now,” said OPIC’S Suzanne Etcheverry.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama met his Hait­ian coun­ter­part Rene Preval in Wash­ing­ton on Wednes­day, and said many Haitians were still in des­per­ate need of shel­ter, food, and medicine.

“The sit­u­a­tion on the ground remains dire,” Obama said.

(Addi­tional report­ing by Jeff Mason in Wash­ing­ton, Edit­ing by Jackie Frank)