Weekly Report - 29 March 2012 (WR-12-13)

HAITI-DOMINICAN REPUBLIC | Firming up ties. Haiti’s President Michel Martelly recently travelled to Santa Domingo where he met President Leonel Fernández, his first official visit to the Dominican Republic since taking office in May 2011. The two leaders participated in a meeting of the joint bilateral commission which was set up in 1996 as the only official forum for promoting relations via various sub-committees covering health, the environment, security, tourism and agriculture among other areas. The agreement signed during Martelly’s visit which attracted the most attention was that establishing a so-called “Bolivarian Fund of Solidarity with Haiti”, to be financed indirectly by Venezuela, through President Hugo Chávez’s subsidised oil scheme, Petrocaribe. According to press reports, the fund, which will be financed by the interest generated on the Dominican Republic’s debt to Venezuela through Petrocaribe (set at 1%), will be used to promote the use of natural gas in Haiti through providing some two million free gas tanks and cooking stoves to the population.