(2021-10) Haiti Macro Poverty Outlook

This edition of the World Bank Macro Poverty Outlook for Haiti was prepared amid a compounding set of shocks: a lingering political and institutional crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the July 7, 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, and the August 14, 2021 magnitude 7.2 earthquake in the southern peninsula, followed two days later by tropical storm Grace. After contracting 3.3 percent in 2020, GDP expanded 0.9 percent during the first half of FY2021 on the back of services, but the combined political and natural-hazard shocks are projected to push output back into contraction in 2021. The earthquake killed more than 2,000 people and caused damages estimated at US$1.1 billion, or 7.0 percent of 2020 GDP. Fiscal dominance and central-bank financing of the deficit continue to weaken monetary policy, with the fiscal deficit having already reached 3.6 percent of GDP by end-August and expected to widen to about 4.7 percent for the year. Consumer price inflation, which averaged 22.9 percent in 2020, slowed to 12.3 percent in July 2021 and is expected to close around 16.0 percent on average. Poverty is projected to rise, leaving almost 52 percent of the population below the lower middle-income poverty line and 26 percent below the international poverty line. The economy is expected to rebound to 3.2 percent in 2022, driven by private consumption and remittances alongside aid-supported reconstruction, though political turmoil remains a central downside risk.

World Bank Macro Poverty Outlook, Haiti country brief, Annual Meetings 2021 (October 2021) edition, retrieved from an archived capture of the live Haiti MPO PDF. Part of the semiannual MPO series.