The Eu­ro­pean Union is pro­vid­ing Haiti with a fi­nanc­ing grant of nine mil­lion Eu­ros (One Eu­ro=US$1.29 cents) for im­prov­ing the per­for­mance of the coun­try’s Gen­er­al Cus­toms Ad­min­is­tra­tion (AGD).

The fund­ing sup­ports the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the “Cus­toms Rev­enue In­crease and Com­bat­ing Smug­gling and Nar­cotics Plan (PAR­LU­COS)”, de­vel­oped by the AGD for the pe­ri­od 2023-2026.

It will al­so strength­en Cus­toms’ ca­pac­i­ty to com­bat smug­gling, il­le­gal drug and arms traf­fick­ing, mo­bi­lize tax rev­enue, fa­cil­i­tate trade, and pro­tect lo­cal busi­ness­es.

Min­is­ter of Econ­o­my and Fi­nance,  Al­fred Fils Metel­lus signed the agree­ment with the EU Am­bas­sador to Haiti, Ste­fano Gat­to.

“We are aware of the ma­jor chal­lenges fac­ing us, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the dif­fi­cult se­cu­ri­ty con­text the coun­try is fac­ing. How­ev­er, the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment is de­ter­mined and res­olute­ly fo­cused on the fu­ture,” said Metel­lus.

“Re­claim­ing con­trol of the bor­der and non-bor­der Cus­toms of­fices is the fun­da­men­tal ob­jec­tive to en­sure the suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion of these re­forms. This ac­tion, more than just an im­por­tant step to­ward mod­ern­iz­ing the cus­toms ad­min­is­tra­tion, will be an es­sen­tial con­tri­bu­tion to the coun­try’s peace, se­cu­ri­ty, and sta­bil­i­ty,” he  added.

The au­thor­i­ties say that through the agree­ment, Haiti and the EU reaf­firm their com­mit­ment to strength­en­ing the coun­try’s in­sti­tu­tions, there­by pro­mot­ing ro­bust, sus­tain­able, and in­clu­sive eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

They said that the agree­ment demon­strates con­fi­dence in the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to over­come cur­rent chal­lenges.

”Through this fund­ing, the AGD is re­ceiv­ing sig­nif­i­cant sup­port to mod­ern­ize its in­fra­struc­ture and equip­ment, strength­en the ca­pac­i­ty of its hu­man re­sources and im­ple­ment dig­i­tal sys­tems for man­ag­ing cus­toms op­er­a­tions,”  they au­thor­i­ties added.

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, May 21, CMC

CMC/aj/ir/2025