Last week Léopold Berlanger, the President of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) discussed a possibility of using a loan from the central bank to finance the 2016-2017 elections. In reaction to this idea, Eddy Labossière, president of the Haitian Association of Economists (AHE) expressed against the idea to look to the central bank to find the means to finance the next election "Those who make such suggestions are probably not imbued with reality," argues the economist.

According to him any recourse to BRH to finance elections may cause serious inflation, adding that the country is already in a precarious economic situation, in his opinion the Government should preferably solicit the autonomous organizations which make huge profits while they have debts to the Government, citing the case of the National Office of Old-Age Insurance (ONA).

However he remains optimistic that the country can find internal resources to finance the election, this for example by reducing spending of some ministries (reallocation and decommissioning).

Recall that the estimated cost of elections 2016-2017 is 55 million dollars and the United States and the European Union declared their intention not to finance the elections, according Labossière the Government should have 800 million gourdes (12.5 million dollars) at the Finance Act, and he estimated that 60% of the budget requested by the CEP should be more than enough.

S/ iciHaiti