The Le Levier Network after Matthew: Stocktaking and Prospects

After a hurricane the binding constraint on rural recovery is often credit rather than technique: a farmer who knows how to replant needs the means to buy planting material and to eat until the harvest. Le Levier is a network of Haitian caisses populaires, the savings and credit cooperatives that are the main formal financial institutions many rural households actually reach, and this presentation by its board chair sets out where the network stood after Matthew and what it expected to do. Its presence at a table otherwise occupied by ministries, conservation agencies and agronomists is the useful part: it puts the question of who finances the recovery, and on what terms, into the same room as the people planning it. The MEF's small-enterprise recapitalisation paper from the same session is its counterpart on the business side.