By Andrew Gully, Agence France-Presse (AFP)

http://reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/SMAR-83M9KB?OpenDocument

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haiti unveiled the first draft of a grand recon­struc­tion plan, say­ing 11.5 bil­lion dol­lars would be needed to help the coun­try rebuild after January’s dev­as­tat­ing earthquake.

Pre­pared by the gov­ern­ment with the help of the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity, the Pre­lim­i­nary Dam­age and Needs Assess­ment (PDNA) will pro­vide the frame­work for dis­cus­sions at a major donors con­fer­ence in New York on March 31.

The plan, pub­lished online, goes far beyond the imme­di­ate pri­or­i­ties of post-quake recon­struc­tion and looks at the mas­sive eco­nomic and gov­er­nance chal­lenges Haiti faces if it wants to become a fully func­tional state.

“This is a process. This is not a final doc­u­ment. This rep­re­sents a vision which is going to be con­stantly devel­oped to arrive at a final ver­sion,” Tourism Min­is­ter Patrick Dela­tour told AFP.

It comes more than two months after the Jan­u­ary 12 quake, which flat­tened large parts of Port-au-Prince and sur­round­ing towns and vil­lages, claim­ing more than 220,000 lives from more than two dozen nations.

A ver­sion of the PDNA, given Tues­day to 28 del­e­ga­tions from coun­tries and orga­ni­za­tions gath­ered in the Domini­can Repub­lic cap­i­tal Santo Domingo for a prepara­tory sum­mit ahead of New York, gave a new toll of 222,570.

“The earth­quake has cre­ated an unprece­dented sit­u­a­tion, ampli­fied by the fact that it struck the country’s most pop­u­lous region and its eco­nomic and admin­is­tra­tive cen­ter,” the assess­ment said.

Com­piled with the help of 250 Hait­ian and inter­na­tional experts, the study put the total dam­age from the 7.0-magnitude quake at a mas­sive 7.9 bil­lion dol­lars, or a mas­sive 120 per­cent of Haiti’s gross domes­tic product.

More than 70 per­cent of those losses were sus­tained by the pri­vate sec­tor and 4.4 bil­lion dol­lars worth of dam­age was to schools, hos­pi­tals, roads, bridges, build­ings, ports and airports.

“The total amount of money needed stands at 11.5 bil­lion dol­lars and breaks down like this: 50 per­cent for the social sec­tor, 17 per­cent for infra­struc­ture includ­ing hous­ing, and 15 per­cent for the envi­ron­ment and dis­as­ter risk man­age­ment,” the doc­u­ment said.

Dela­tour stressed that 11.5 bil­lion dol­lars — a sum reached by World Bank and UN experts — was only a ball­park fig­ure and that esti­mates for the total recon­struc­tion cost ranged any­where between eight and 14 bil­lion dollars.

In addi­tion to try­ing to answer Haiti’s imme­di­ate short-term con­cerns, the plan also listed ide­al­is­tic longer-term goals such as “recon­struct­ing the state and the econ­omy in the ser­vice of all Haitians,” and reform­ing the judiciary.

One focus, already men­tioned by Pres­i­dent Rene Preval and heav­ily pro­moted in the draft, was regen­er­at­ing the rest of Haiti to end years of con­ges­tion and abject poverty in the capital.

“Fol­low­ing the quake, more than 500,000 peo­ple were dis­placed to sec­ondary towns. This new dis­tri­b­u­tion of the pop­u­la­tion is an oppor­tu­nity to develop other poles of growth,” the plan said.

The gov­ern­ment vowed in the draft to develop infra­struc­ture and drive new eco­nomic oppor­tu­ni­ties out­side the cap­i­tal while accel­er­at­ing the process of decentralization.

The plan iden­ti­fied the main short-term pri­or­ity as prepar­ing those with­out shel­ter for heav­ier rains, which begin in earnest next month, and the hur­ri­cane sea­son start­ing June 1.

Some 1.3 mil­lion Haitians were left home­less by the quake and 218,000 sur­vivors are liv­ing in makeshift camps in Port-au-Prince at grave risk from flood­ing and land­slides, accord­ing to the lat­est UN figures.

The gov­ern­ment also stressed the need to enforce stricter build­ing codes — poor hous­ing is thought to have been the biggest fac­tor in the stag­ger­ing death toll from the quake.

Other pri­or­i­ties listed were rein­forc­ing dis­as­ter alert and evac­u­a­tion sys­tems and improv­ing an appalling envi­ron­men­tal record that has seen the nation lose more than 98 per­cent of its woodland.

Address­ing del­e­gates in Santo Domingo, Prime Min­is­ter Jean-Max Bel­lerive defended the gov­ern­ment against crit­i­cism it had been slow to get on with the giant task of reconstruction.

Also Tues­day, eight Hait­ian human rights groups denounced alleged cor­rup­tion in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of human­i­tar­ian aid and said the con­di­tions in some of the camps was a fla­grant vio­la­tion of sur­vivors’ social and eco­nomic rights.