Above: Haiti Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe (Photo: OPM Haiti)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Haiti’s government says it is continuing its efforts to smooth the process of registration for new companies in the country.

On Tuesday, Haiti Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe led a meeting on modernizing the registration process, aiming to improve the quality of service offered by the Department of Trade and Industry to potential investors wishing to come to Haiti.

“Haiti is open for business” has been a major prong of the Martelly-Lamothe administration and the major multilaterals working in Haiti.

But business laws in the country remain relatively byzantine, and the country is looking to create a “single electronic window” for new Haitian businesses.

In a statement, Lamothe’s office said Haiti’s government was committed to “mobilize all necessary resources” so that the country is better positioned in the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation’s Doing Business report.

In the latest iteration of the report, Haiti was ranked 175th out of 185 countries.

“It takes right now too long to open a company,” Lamothe told an audience at Saint Thomas University during a recent visit to Miami.

For some time, there have been 15 steps to open a company in Haiti, he said; the new process aims to consolidate all of those steps in one online process, which would take about 10 minutes.