Banking Reform Law Creating the Banque de la République d'Haïti and the Banque Nationale de Crédit

This gazette issue carries the reform that produced Haiti's modern monetary institutions. Its summary lists three connected laws: the banking reform law replacing the Banque Nationale de la République d'Haïti with two autonomous institutions, the BRH and the BNC; the law creating the Banque de la République d'Haïti; and the law creating the Banque Nationale de Crédit. Until then a single institution had combined central-banking functions with ordinary commercial banking, and the reform separated the two. Every subsequent Haitian financial-sector instrument refers back to this text - the 2012 banking law, the anti-money-laundering laws of 2001 and 2013 and the 2017 UCREF law all cite 'the law of 17 August 1979 creating and organizing the Banque de la République d'Haïti' in their preambles. It is signed by Jean-Claude Duvalier as President for Life and the gazette is dated by the year of the Duvalier revolution as well as by the calendar, which places the reform precisely in its political period.