Haiti - Economy : Only 5% of Haitian companies make reliable declarations
According to Frantz Bernard Craan, the Coordinator of the Private Sector Economic Forum, only 5% of the estimated 300,000 Haitian businesses publish financial statements that are considered reliable. He strongly advises companies to have a recognized accounting system, in order to be able to submit to potential investors their actual financial statements and honestly fulfill their obligations with the Directorate General of Taxes (DGI) and the General Administration of Customs (AGD), rather than producing false or erroneous statements, which harm the entire economy of the country.
He emphasizes that good accounting practice would make it easier for these companies to obtain credit from banking institutions and reduce the demand for collateral required by banks because of the unreliability of the financial information submitted by companies...
Craan deplores that the majority of businesses in Haiti operate in the informal or semi-formal, stating that in the West department only 340 companies, out of nearly 13,000 are registered at the Chamber of Commerce.
Moreover, he denounces a culture of fraud citing the example of the volume of commercial activities on the borders, estimated at ± 1 billion dollars of goods imported from the Dominican Republic while hardly more than half are declared, which causes a large deficit in customs revenue and to the Treasury.
