Law on the Modernisation of Public Enterprises

This law is the legal instrument behind Haiti's public-enterprise reform program of the 1990s. It authorizes the modernization of state enterprises and sets out the forms that modernization may take - the arrangements through which the state may withdraw from, restructure or delegate the management of enterprises it owns. Its preamble is anchored in a long list of constitutional articles concerning the economic order, public property and the powers of the legislature (articles 81, 87.1, 87.2, 87.4, 111, 111.1, 136, 217, 219, 232, 238, 241 through 253). The reform it enabled - covering the flour mill, the cement works, the ports, telecommunications and the electricity utility among others - proceeded only partially and became a durable line of political division in Haiti, so the law is read as much for what was attempted as for what was achieved. Published in Le Moniteur, 151st year, No. 75-A, Thursday 10 October 1995.