Above: the Royal Oasis in Haiti
By the Caribbean Journal staff
The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund officially ceased formal operations Monday, a move the organization announced in early December.
The fund was launched by former United States Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush following the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. It sought to support economic projects through grants and equity investments.
One of those projects included the newly-opened Royal Oasis Hotel in Haiti, in which the fund made a $2 million equity investment. The fund said it had monetized the shares in the hotel, recycling the money into a $2 million contribution to the State University of Haiti’s Faculty of Sciences.
As announced, the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund will be assuming the remainder of the fund’s grants and loans. The MIF was chosen based on its “successful track record with innovative development projects in Haiti,” among other reasons, the fund said in a statement in December.
The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund committed both cash and repayments from its remaining loans to the MIF. The MIF will reportedly use that funding to invest in programmes in Haiti in line with the two groups’ “shared mission of economic opportunity.”
The MIF will be managing CBHF programes that have not yet been fully implemented, and will receive funds from remaining loans.
Last month, the fund said it had sustained or created 7,350 jobs and trained 20,050 people in Haiti.
“Any successes we have had are not ours, but the Haitian people’s,” Clinton Bush Haiti Fund CEO Gary Edson said in a statement at the time.