They moved back a decade ago. Now they’re struggling amid Haiti’s economic collapse

Behind the bar of a once derelict warehouse turned boutique hotel, Georges Boursiquot is dressed in his signature Brooks Brothers shirt, mixing a cocktail made with a dark rum — "handcrafted in small batches" — he bottles under the brand Bomuzack.

Across the room, a birthday celebration is underway in what's a rare busy night at L'auberge Du Vieux Port hotel as diners enjoy meals of fried pork and roasted fish with fried plantains and sorghum in the small dining area to the soothing sounds of Haitian .

Ten years ago, Boursiquot and his wife Marguerite Baril-Boursiquot, both Haitian, did what many in the country's burgeoning diaspora long dreamed of: They permanently moved back to Haiti.

With personal savings from the sale of their Brooklyn brownstone andloans from banks and the U.S. Agency for International Development to encourage investments in a post-quake Haiti, they bought a former coffee warehouse along Jacmel's famous Rue du Commerce. Over three years, they worked at transforming its centuries old French-style architecture into a modern-day boutique hotel with 12 rooms named after some of Jacmel's most famous attractions, and a bar made from the original warehouse'st 326-year-old trusses.

But what began as a mission to "come back home and do the right thing," after spending most of his life outside of Haiti after fleeing under the brutal Duvalier dictatorship regime, has since turned into "an economic disaster," says Boursiquot, 71. He now finds himself questioning the decision amid frustrating gang-controlled roadblocks, closed local government offices and the disappearance of vacationers who once poured into this seaside town on Haiti's south coast.

"For the last five years, generally, I could spend the whole week here without selling a hot plate of food or I can spend a month not renting a room," he said.

This hotel is far from the only business struggling to survive. Haiti's entire economy, never exactly robust, was knocked to its knees by the devastating 2010 earthquake. But it's been hemorrhaging in the last six years, accelerated by the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and the tightened grip of armed gang since. In February, gangs targeted police stations, hospitals, private businesses and the airport as have since taken control of much of metropolitan Port-au-Prince, which have only added to the financial losses.

Broken promises, deepening poverty

Promises made in the wake of the quake to rebrand Haiti's dysfunctional image and revitalize faded tourism in cities like Jacmel never materialized. Instead, political instability and a succession of crises have fueled an economic meltdown where poverty and hunger are rapidly spreading and unemployment is rising. Predating the rise of the gangs, the decline likely fueled their explosion.

The textile sector alone, once a major employer, has lost 30,000 factory jobs, in the last three years while hotels, including some built after the quake, have either closed or been forced to dramatically reduce staff. In July, inflation hit 30%.

"The combination of a high unemployment rate and inflationary pressures is leading to the increase of the poverty level," said Port-au-Prince based economist Kesner Pharel. While overall poverty has increased by 60%, Pharel said extreme poverty, including misery, has gone up 30%.

Three hours from the capital by road and 15-minutes by plane, Jacmel is where tourism was supposed to be reborn after the quake left more than 300,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless.

At least that's the vision sold to Boursiquot who worked in real estate, as he watched celebrities from designer Donna Karan to South Beach nightclub owner -turned humanitarian Michael Capponi descend on the port city, promising to transform its lush hillsides and colorful arts culture into a must see tourist destination and engine of job creation.

"They were talking about bringing a cruise ship, that's how they got me," Boursiquot said, sitting inside his dining area adjacent to a cobblestone street tracing a path of shuttered buildings, including a closed government ministry of tourism and culture office. "They said, 'Haiti's open for business.' And I said, 'Okay, let me go see.' I came, I saw and thought, 'Wow.' It was a mess over there and then there was this beautiful plaza, Lakou New York."

The New Yorker and native of Jacmel was hooked after seeing the mosaic boardwalk along the city's downtown. "I decided the right thing to do was to go back to Haiti and contribute," he said. "We decided to totally dis-invest in New York and reinvest in Haiti."

In 2017, the couple welcomed their first guests to L'auberge Du Vieux Port. A month later, "the curve started to go down. It was crazy," Boursiquot said, naming the string of crises that have followed since including the "different waves of kidnappings."

"It's a hardship to keep this place open," he added, noting that some months he and his wife have to dip into their pensions to pay employees. "A case of beer, Prestige, nationally brewed, I used to purchase it two years ago for 700 gourdes. Now I am paying 4,750 gourdes."

In U.S. dollars, it went from just under $6 for a case of beer to more than five times the cost. It's a price hike some fear will only worsen after armed gangs last week kidnapped two crew members of a cargo ship and fired shots into the Port-au-Prince bay, leading to threats by maritime shipping lines that they will stop coming.

Haitians reluctant to discuss losses

Boursiquot is a rarity for his candor. Most Haitians won't discuss their economic hardships. They are either too embarrassed or too distraught, having in some cases lost millions of dollars and even homes put up as collateral for business loans.

But the trail of victims from the economic wreckage run the gamut from the female traders who serve as the backbone of the economy to family-run conglomerates. Six years of negative economic growth fueled by the succession of crises, mismanagement of the economy and disasters that have left the country even more broken than the powerful 2010 earthquake are all to blame.

The natural disasters include another destructive earthquake, this one hitting the southern region in 2021 just as cities were still trying to recover from 2016's Hurricane Matthew, the COVID-19 pandemic and the countrywide lockdown known as "" The 2019 lockdown, said one economist, was like a never ending quake that not only shuttered schools and businesses for months, but continued to have ripple effects long after economic activities had resumed.

What the man-made lockdown and unavoidable pandemic didn't destroy, then the manipulation of the exchange rate under the late President Jovenel Moïse did — along with the violence by armed gangs that has escalated since his 2021 assassination. Gangs' control of key transport roads is not only making life difficult in Port-au-Prince where 80% of the country's economy lies, but in rural provinces like Jacmel that depend on the capital to keep their already fragile economies afloat.

"Things are expensive and aren't available as you would like," said Baril-Boursiquot. "The supermarket is empty."

Recently, she said, her husband traveled to the U.S. where he bought items for the hotel. Weeks later, the goods were still stuck at the port in the capital. Normally, such delays would lead to frustrations. But it's a minor hiccup in comparison to the more difficult challenge of getting the goods to Jacmel. Armed groups not only control the road out of the seaport but also the main highway linking southern Haiti to Port-au-Prince.

Rescuing the Haitian economy

The months-long closure of the main seaport and international and domestic airports earlier this year led to a 10% drop overall imports, Haiti Central Bank Governor Ronald Gabriel, said this week. Though there has been some resumption of commercial activities, production still has not recovered, he said, which is extremely important "for us to get out of what we can call the trap of negative growth."

"We have entered the sixth consecutive year of negative growth," Gabriel said, insisting there are investment opportunities. "We will end the year between negative 3% and 4%."

The World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and International Monetary Fund are all currently trying to assess how much assistance is needed to help Haiti revitalize its economy. And Haitian leaders are still pushing for help from citizens who have left the nation long ago and prospered.

In a one-page document promoting a Haiti Investment Forum on Wednesday in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the government of Prime Minister Garry Conille insists that "despite the lack of investment in various key sectors in Haiti over the past few years, and the multiple challenges faced, there are still significant opportunities."

"As such, the government prioritizes private investments, including Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and contributions from The Haitian Diaspora, as crucial for economic recovery," the document states. Tourism is among the areas listed as priority sectors.

While everyone agrees Haiti's economy needs a massive rescue effort, not everyone agrees on the timing of the push given that the security situation remains precarious and unpredictable, and a foreign armed mission, led by Kenya, has yet to make significant strides in putting down gangs.

Business owners say while they need the security environment to improve, they also want more attention paid by both the government and donors of their financial losses.

"Even if I would be occupied 60% of the time I still won't be able to repay the loan," said Boursiquot, complaining about the lack of grace that has come from the banking sector. He notes that in other countries that have been hit by recession and economic collapse, governments "gave an injection of cash."

Companies, he said, received "big fat loans and subsidies to help their business still flow, to keep employment alive. Why not Haiti? I keep telling them you have to evaporate our little loans. How else are we going to survive?"

Citibank, FINCA withdrawal

But the future of the financial sector is also on shaky ground.

"The entire financial system is affected by this situation; whether its microfinance, commercial banks," Gabriel, the central bank governor said Wednesday during a conference. Dozens of bank branches have been vandalized, looted or set on fire; hundreds of employees have left and Haitians in some regions of the country, who rely on the more than $3 billion in remittances sent from the diaspora annually to live, have difficulty getting cash due to a liquidity problems.

Meanwhile, some 969 small and medium enterprises are struggling, Gabriel said. In response to the crisis the central bank has issued 117 moratoriums including a temporary suspension on loans principals. But even with just interests payments being required, business owners have found themselves in default, leaving banks with a record number of unproductive loans.

Among the figures Gabriel presented: 447 loans, amounting to nearly $924.4 million, are currently in distress within the banking system; some 68% are commercial enterprises. "There are 307 that are struggling with loan repayments."

For those business owners who have managed to remain open, they are operating with a prayer. After armed gangs escalated their attacks this year, insured business owners were put on notice that going forward they won't be covered for riots or similar attacks. The bad news didn't stop there.

In June, the microfinance institution FINCA took the difficult decision to indefinitely discontinue its operations in Haiti, where it was an alternative for a vast majority of small merchants, over 80% of them women, eschewing traditional banks. The company, which had 10 branches across the country, first opened its doors in 1989. Nearly 17,000 microfinance institutions are in financial difficulty, the central bank governor acknowledged.

"The people of Haiti have been incredibly resilient," Keith Sandbloom, FINCA Haiti's former board chair, said in an interview after the closure of its call center and last branch became public. "What made it a challenge for us and why we eventually made the decision to close our doors was the security situation. It's very hard to be resilient in the face of constant physical threats."

"If there was a nail in the coffin," he added, "it was the insecurity."

Weeks after FINCA closed, Citibank, the only foreign bank still operating in the country, also announced its withdrawal from Haiti.

Economists say Citibank's withdrawal won't have a huge impact, a position also shared by U.S. authorities, who relied on the bank for transactions. However, clear-eye observers acknowledge that the departure of a bank that had operated for 50 years does not bode well for instilling confidence in an economy on life support.

Even worse, says one economist who asked for anonymity to speak about the situation frankly, Citibank's decision to surrender its license to the Central Bank rather than sell it as other foreign banks had done upon leaving, demonstrated they didn't believe it had any value.

'Haiti is like a sweet little poison'

Once a jewel in a country that led Caribbean tourism, Jacmel today is a faded version of its former self. Its

"There is only one plane and you have to fight tooth and nail for a seat on that plane," Boursiquot said, noting that even with two daily flights ferrying nine passengers you can't build a brand much less an economy with 18 people in and 18 people out a day.

So why stay in Haiti? The retiree grins with a sly smile. "Haiti is like a sweet little poison," he says, "that you can't live without."