 Hello, my name is Ogale Odo, and I welcome you to this panel discussion regarding investing in Haiti. We have an esteemed panel with us today, which I would like to introduce, starting with Jean-Marc Kuvili from DAI, who leads the USAID Haiti Technical Assistance Program called Haiti Invest. We have Tony Moise, who is the Director General of Haiti's Development Bank, Sophie. We have Robert Pahre Jr., who is the Chairman and CEO of Profan, Haiti's only investment bank, and of course we have Andy Hescovis, who has joined us from USAID, from US Development Finance Corporation, where he is the Chief Development Officer. Now, this is a great opportunity in Haiti, and the social returns on investments, at this time they have some of the highest in the world. Imagine our benefit to investing, say, a dollar in Haiti, and what I hear is tremendous, and the impact investing community combined with philanthropy and entrepreneurship can really do great things here, this is what we believe. So, like elsewhere in the world, small businesses in Haiti struggle to access capital from local financiers, but today we will tackle three subjects, which include one, the challenges of doing business in Haiti, two, the specific challenges that insecurity poses in Haiti, and lastly, the investment of opportunities in this country. I would like to encourage you, distinguished panelists and the audience, to think about how this discussion applies to other least developed countries. Now, I would like to start with you Jean-Marc, if you have a minute. USAID, Haiti developed a program whereby we hire transaction advisors to over the last few years help SME successfully close millions in financing with local and international investors. Can you start off, Jean-Marc, by giving some context and sharing an example with us, for instance. What were the primary constraints that companies faced prior to successfully raising capital? Sure, sure. Well, first of all, thank you for having me and allowing me to participate in this panel. Well, the Haiti Invest Platform is a different way to tackle the difficulty in raising capital in a challenging environment. What we see in Haiti is that there are a number of strong firms that have, and strong entrepreneurs, I should say, that simply don't have the resources, the know-how, the time to secure, find the sources of capital that they need and grow, expand their businesses in a way that the local economy desperately needs. And so what we structured through Haiti Invest is essentially a way of supporting what we would call middlemen or transaction advisors that are tasked with identifying those businesses that are in need of capital and then doing all the work that's necessary for preparing them and making them stronger, more competitive within the capital market, both local and potentially overseas, and then securing those sources of capital and closing the deals. So over the last close to three and a half years, we have worked with seven such transaction advisors, all local firms that have deep roots in the country and know, have contacts with the small and medium business enterprises, and we've really partnered with them and provided them financial incentives to close transactions. Despite the challenging environment, I think that the results have been very promising to us. In total, we gave out about $1.9 million in incentive capital. And these transaction advisors have been able to secure to date roughly 19, over 19 million in financing for 11 SMEs. And there is currently another $3 million waiting to be closed, and they have an additional pipeline of $10 million. So just on the capital that's closed already, we've seen 10 times our multiple, if you will, multiple invested of roughly 10 times, turning $1.9 million of USAID capital into $19 million of investment. And we've worked with a gamut of businesses ranging in all sectors of the economy, manufacturing, hospitality, energy, agriculture. So it's really ranged. And if you look at the size of the deals that we've done, the average deal is roughly $1.7 million, but that's a bit skewed because there are a couple of transactions that are on the large side. But the median transaction is roughly $330,000. So you're really looking at businesses that are, in general, accessing bank financing, quite a bit of what we would qualify as sometimes philanthropies that are doing private investments. We're seeing a lot of this type of development capital, whether it's from DFIs or other such organizations. So it really runs the gamut. And as I said, so far we've closed on 11 such businesses. I can give you an example of one business that we did during the, just at the start of the COVID pandemic. This was a producer of cleaning products that wanted to build up their inventory of, as the pandemic was starting to take hold in Europe and before it had really arrived in Haiti, and they were able to secure $250,000 from a local bank in order to build up their inventory and prepare themselves for the additional needs that they were seeing in Haiti. We've worked on the agricultural side. We've worked with a business that basically works with local farmers to get their products to overseas market. They received a loan from a development organization that's been operating in Haiti for a long time. So again, these are the businesses that have been entrenched in Haiti for a while, but have had difficulties in accessing this type of capital. Thank you so much. That's a brilliant answer. We started out with showing what was possible, but I'm going to move now to Tony Moise to talk about some of the difficulties in starting a business. Tony, doing business in Haiti, people know it's relatively difficult, but starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering properties, can, unlike in other places, be much more difficult than, say, in the US or other developed places. What is important to this group is that few protections for minority investors exist, and you've been learning to SMEs for decades. What challenges do you see your clients having in the market and what prevents their expansion? Tony, can you hear me? Perhaps this is a question. Let me move on to Robert Parry, for instance, because I know you have some great experience as the president of Haiti's first and only investment bank. Again, I want to thank you for joining us. I understand that your business involves developing capital markets and creating opportunities for institutional and retail investors alike. However, on the investment side of your business, investing in Haitian SMEs, what unique advantage do local investors have? How do you think it's possible for external investors to navigate these challenging waters? Well, let me start by saying that I'm a former commercial banker. I spent over 20 years in the commercial banking world, most of that time in the credit field, which gave me enough time to measure what are the challenges when it comes to bringing capital to companies. And also the challenges in bringing opportunity for investment. First, for individuals in Haiti, for companies as well, which are sometimes seeking solutions to handle the treasury management and last but not least for international investors. I could start by Haitian diaspora, but also for investors from the region or from elsewhere. This is one of the reasons why I decided to leave my position as deputy CEO and then the first, the largest Haitian bank and grabbed the opportunity that came with changing the legal framework. In 2012, the Haitian Parliament voted a regulation that for the first time created opportunity to create an investment bank in Haiti. And I found that it was a serious opportunity to do things that was impossible before. Moving toward creating a capital market with all the benefits. Obviously all the challenges, but with a certainty... I'm sorry, I went too mute. The certainty for us was that capital market is bringing the opportunity to do two major things. Help creating wealth, but also create conditions to spread that wealth. Obviously, we know Haiti has a significant social gap. You mentioned insecurity and sometimes we talk about insecurity and we just refer to turmoil in the streets, arm gangs. But I think one of the greatest insecurity is that social gap that is widening day after day and leaves the country with a little grip for people from the community to connect. And we found that investment is one of these ways where not only we can bring the capital from individuals who have the desire to invest in their country and sometimes they have nowhere else to invest it, but also to bring much needed resources, mostly long-time resources which are what is mostly needed when you want to invest in sustainable business, business that have the real ability to create added value, whether it's in agriculture, in manufacturing, in tourism. Because the financial market was not developed, it left a little way for companies to take some bet on the long-term. And this is one of the opportunities that creating an investment bank brought. Finding resources that are available not on a short-term, not as a credit line, not just for a business cycle, but for the long-term with the ability to face some risk but also perhaps some opportunities. And as I said, the second opportunity is that of giving those who, until we came to the market, only had the option of going to a bank and put their money at a rate that is by all means below inflation, whether it's in US dollar or in local currency. And now find the ability to make a portfolio and obviously all the techniques that we didn't have, as we didn't have a capital market, now we are showing our customers how to build a portfolio, balance the risk and build also a future because you got to know that we only have a public pension plan which is not effective. Most of the money used in allocations is that there's a lot of corruption and people getting to retirement have really no option. So capital market is bringing that dual opportunity, creating the channel to bring resources on the long-term basis but creating also the opportunity for investment first for local but also paving the way by creating structured channels when more structured investors from outside will want to come. And this is also one of the reasons why we created a company which is not only a Haitian base but also connected with Jamaica which as you certainly know is one of the most active financial market in the Caribbean. So we created a company called Caribbean Investor Capital which has subsidiaries in Jamaica connecting with the Jamaican market, investing in the Caribbean also a way to diversify risk but also connecting the channel with some international ways of bringing money. So this is what we've been doing for the last eight years. Obviously there is a long way to go but with the support of strong partners including Haiti Invest, we are one of the portfolio companies of Haiti Invest. We have actually, we have sizable reasons which make us believe that it's the way to go. Great. Thank you. Oh, actually Tony is back with us. Thank you. Tony, I just, I think this question is still in play. If you don't mind, the question was that I had for you was the fact that doing business in Haiti is difficult and starting a business delivery construction permits of registering property can be terribly difficult compared to other countries. But it is important for the group, you know, members of the diaspora who have not been here for quite a long time and who might want to invest in the southern part of Haiti where we just had the earthquake. It is important for them to see, to understand the protections for, that protections for minority investors might exist. Now, you've been lending to SMEs for decades and we're just asking, you know, what are some of these type of challenges that you see your clients having in this market and what might prevent their expansion? Okay. Thank you guys for having me on this panel. Sorry for this, for those all back and forth connections. It's due to internet providers. So sorry about that again. So let me first start by giving you a quick, a real quick overview of what SOFIDAS is. SOFIDAS is a GFI Development Finance Institution created since 1983 now, 38 years. We are a privately owned company with more than 250 shareholders and the biggest one is owning 10% of the capital. So this is a very wide capital spread at SOFIDAS. Objectives are obviously to finance, not only finance but supporting SMEs in both financial services and non-financial services. Because besides the credit division, we do have also a technical assistance division that provide technical assistance to SMEs in terms of trainings, building business plans, accounting services, stuff like that. SOFIDAS is a portfolio of about 2 billion goods. 2 billion goods is today almost a little bit more than 20 million US dollars with a balance sheet, with a balance sheet of about 44 million US dollars. Great. Thank you so much, Tony. Are you still with us, Tony? It seems like he's having boundary problems. Let's move on while we wait for Tony again to Andy. Andy, such a pleasure to have you join us. I know that the DFC has provided guarantees in the past to helping lending institutions reach new clients, actually, even in Haiti. I know in many parts of Africa, but in Haiti too, you are here now. My question is, how has the DFC strategy changed over the past year that you've been with them, especially as it relates to Haiti and to similarly challenging environments? Are there any new tools being offered by the DFC now? I think it's helpful to give a little bit of background on DFC, which is the US government's new US International Development Finance Corporation, which is the successor entity to two different previous entities, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, OPIC, which was different, and then USAID's Development Credit Authority, which has a long history of doing deals in Haiti. In fact, probably between 2002 and 2007, I worked on the very first loan guarantee transactions in Haiti for USAID when I was a lawyer based out of Santa Domingo. So I'm very familiar with Sophie Dason, Soja Bank, and Fonkose, and all of the banks. And what's interesting is as these two different entities have merged, the mandate has changed. OPIC was heavily focused on very, very large transactions, often in upper-middle income or even high-income countries that were earning return for the US taxpayer, whereas the reason behind the creation of DFC was that we wanted to, one, take on a bit more risk but make sure that our lending activities were more highly developmental. Focusing in the tougher markets, we have a specific mandate to prioritize investments in low-income and lower-middle-income countries. And when you look at Latin America and the Caribbean, there are only five lower-middle-income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and one of those is Haiti. And so with all of the challenges and the fragility issues in Haiti, we still have this mandate to try to identify and prioritize those types of transactions. So while others may shy away from it, I've been having several calls of people trying to figure out what can we do. And another one of the interesting changes, I mean, we can talk about new tools. One of the new tools now is DFC has the ability to provide some technical assistance, repayable grants, essentially, that are linked to transactions that we do. We also have the ability to make equity investments, but it's a relatively new tool that we're not deploying very heavily. But the biggest change in my opinion, well, two big changes. One, that OPIC had a U.S. nexus requirement, which meant that any investment, any financing that it did, had to have some U.S. investor or connection. Whereas when DFC was established, that requirement was removed. There's still a preference, but there's no requirement, which means we can provide direct loans to Haitian companies. We can provide loan guarantees to Haitian companies. In theory, we can do equity investments to Haitian companies as well. So that's a major, major change. The other major change is that OPIC, as a development finance institution, was designed to live off its proceeds and have like almost like revolved through the money. And so like a lot of the DFI's, they have to earn a return for their shareholder. With DFC, that's not a requirement anymore. We get an annual appropriation from our Congress. And our Congress has said that we just need to determine what the appropriate financial performance of our portfolio is. So what that says to me as a chief development officer is that we've got a lot more room to take on more risk. We're not going to obviously make a lot of bad investments. Our deals are supposed to be commercially viable, our loans are supposed to be based on commercial viability. But I still, a lot of people like to talk about actual risk and perceived risk. And I guess we'll get to this a little bit later. But I'm dying to try to find more opportunities for DFC to identify transactions in Haiti. So I hope that John Mark is, and his transaction advisors are bringing us the types of deals that we need. I was going to say that we've got quite a few for you to take a look at, Andy. So I'll be sure to take it away. That was great. Actually, Jean-Marc, I was going to ask you the next question based on your experience in Haiti. And it's more specific to a lot of what people think about Haiti sometimes when they first hear of this country or invest in this country, they talk about security. Now, in your experience or in your opinion, how has insecurity affected your work in Haiti? And how have you seen insecurity impact the businesses that you work with? Sure. Well, there's no denying it that the level of insecurity that exists, and as has been mentioned before, it's not only political insecurity, but it's also economic insecurity. It's also just frankly, businesses being unable to plan for the future. I think that's really the most difficult part about operating in Haiti is not being able to plan for the future because nothing is a given. So clearly that has an effect on the businesses, on their desire to receive investment capital, their tolerance for risk. And it also has an effect obviously on investors. It has an effect with the local banks in terms of their exposure to the market and of course, even with impact investors that have a mandate to invest in Haiti, they need to approach the country cautiously because of the level of added insecurity. But what I would highlight, and I think what we've seen with the businesses, the SMEs that we supported, is to a certain extent, the difficult environment creates businesses or forces those businesses that operate in this type of environment to be extremely resilient. They operate in a way where they are calculating all the risks and thinking through, because they have experience operating in the market. I'll give you an example. One of the businesses that we supported, I was talking to the CEO, and he told me that a few years ago, what they decided to do was to get a company van that would pick up all their employees and bring them to the office. And they found that this made them much more productive because suddenly they were not beholden to strikes or manifestations or closures, and they were able to operate. And I think he told me in the year where there were quite a few months of manifestations and closures that there were only three business days in which they were unable to operate, which is pretty astounding given what the state of the overall political situation was. So that's just one example, but I would say that all these businesses have figured out how to operate in this kind of environment. And let's not forget that Haiti's a country of 12 million people. There is a need for the services that these businesses provide. So they are fulfilling a very important function whether it's providing energy or water or whatever you might think of. These are essential businesses. That's a word that we learned through COVID. But these are all essential businesses in operating there and they've determined ways to deal with that market. So I think it's really for that reason that despite the fact that we started in 2018 and 2019 was a difficult year, 2020 was a difficult year with COVID, we've still been able to see our program generate the type of financing and investment that we were really hoping for. Now that's not to say I'm sure that had the situation been, the macro situation been a little bit friendly, we probably would have seen more. But nevertheless, to be able to see these types of results in a challenging environment, I think speaks to the fact that these are businesses, these are entrepreneurs that are very strong in their markets and they're very strong at what they're doing. That's very helpful. Thank you very much. I'm going to move back to Andy just because we've talked about insecurity and I want to see it from the viewpoint of the DFC. And this is a two-part question, if you don't mind. How does the DFC view insecurity as an external investor and the fact that despite insecurity and Haiti, what is the opportunity for the DFC and for the folks that the DFC supports to invest in Haiti? What are some of your thoughts on that? So Andy's views on insecurity and DFC's views on insecurity aren't necessarily one in the same. And it's because I come from USAID. I worked at USAID for 20 years. And USAID is a grant organization that essentially disperses billions of dollars a year without the expectation of getting repaid, except for in the case of the former loan guarantee program, which is now part of DFC. So the culture that I come from and having worked on that DCA, the loan guarantee program, is very different from the culture from what was formerly OPIC and is now DFC. So part of what we're working through is the cultural shift. So we did the first ever development strategy for DFC where we didn't just focus on the amount of money that we're moving and the amount of money that we're dispersing. Because you can say that you've done $8 billion last year in disbursements, but my question is, what have you achieved with that? What's the development output? We're not a commercial bank. So I want to know that there's going to be an output from each of these things. And I want to make sure we're taking the appropriate risk because USAID would never go out and brag about spending $8 billion a year. But AID instead would talk about the impact of the money that it's spent. So in our strategy, one of the things that we've done is we've set the goal of making sure that at least 60% of our transactions are in low-income, lower-middle-income or fragile states. We've done some town halls with Haitian companies to tell them about DFC's tools. So really trying to demonstrate that we're willing to take on more risk. But part of the story that I've told a few times actually since I come to DFC is the story when I presented the first ever loan guarantee deals from USAID to USAID's credit review board from Haiti. And it was in the early 2000s, and people said to me, how can you recommend that we provide loan guarantees in Haiti when there had just been a coup six months ago? And my response to them was, look at the one thing that has been constant in Haiti over the last 50 years. And Tony talked about this, like, Sophie Desch has existed since 1983. How many governments have there been in Haiti since 1983 that Sophie Desch continues? And there's anyone who understands the risks of doing business in Haiti. It's these financial institutions, and it's the businesses that continue regardless of which government is in place. And so that's the goal of making sure that people understand the risk, understand the partners, and their tremendous opportunities. And we did those loan guarantees, and they were not problematic at all. So eventually these got approved. So that's part of my goal and my mission while I'm at DFC is I really want us to do more in Haiti and convince others on our credit committee and our risk folks that this is worth the effort. We don't have to earn a return across the entire portfolio, but it allows us to take on more risk. And I actually don't think the risk is as great as people think if you have the right partners. Great, great. Thank you so much, Andy. That was brilliant answer. You've set us on the path to the final few minutes. I just want to open this up to the rest of the panel to talk about their vision and the opportunities that they've seen in Haiti or opportunities that they expect to see in Haiti and now to encourage people. Let us start. Tony, we've not heard that much from you, partly because of interruptions, but please, what opportunities very quickly do you see here in Haiti? Well, I'm here. I'm here. Yeah, what opportunities are there for business? I would like to thank Andy for mentioning Sophie Desa as a partner. Of course, we are a partner and we've been managing the DCA program, which no longer exists, but I believe it still exists for DFC. In terms of challenges, besides the constant political turmoil that Robert mentioned, high level of insecurity and also natural disasters, I would like to focus a little bit on a lack of qualified human resources. Maybe you know about it. In Haiti, we have suffered from a quantity of waves of migrants that left Haiti since I'm a professional studying in the 20s with a first wave going out from Canada. It was a lot of professionals, accountants, engineers, doctors that left the country for Canada. And then we had most recently the waves for Latin America, countries like Chile, Brazil, etc. Where we lost a lot of, let's say, workers' constructions, urbanists, plumbers, those are people, workers that left, most of them SMEs that needs them to keep warning, and then all of a sudden they lost them. And today it's very difficult for SMEs to find good employees that can work, and also for us financial institutions, it's very difficult to have good quality human resources. Robert has an instinct to find them, but myself it's difficult for me. But still we do our part and we keep doing it as well as we can. This is one thing I wanted to focus on. A lot of challenge that we find a little bit difficult to deal with is the lack of financing, I mean for financial institutions like myself, since we are not a bank, we find it sometimes difficult to find the good balance in terms of cost of financing. So we can pass it through our clients at better conditions. Tony, just a second there, I know Andy and Jean-Marc, those are areas that they definitely are specialism, but Robert is the one person who represents the non-bank financial institution, at least in Haiti in between the two of you. I want to just get his last few words on this discussion on the opportunities that have been available to him and opportunities that he sees available here in Haiti. Just a final word from Robert, please. Thank you. Opportunities obviously we've seen many. And I definitely have no regrets from, you know, sometimes I wish I still was a banker because maybe it's a more stable life, but having said that, when we look at what has been created, just to give you a certain sense, back in 2017 we had zero dollars of asset under management. Today we raised $50 million of money mostly from people living in Haiti, which was raised in Haiti and invested in companies, invested for quotes. Aside from this amount we raised over $25 million of money raised for private direct investment in companies. That's a way to say that first there is a base for capital and a desire to invest. And obviously whichever international investor will look at what is done by local players first. Well, and this is why we started by building a basis locally. And as we are talking about impact at SOCAP the very first impact we see and the very first opportunity is that of fulfilling that social gap not by going and staying in the aid approach, but by investing. Obviously investing with the desire to have capital back have a decent return and create stability, create wealth, create your creation, create proper behavior at the business level. Because when we invest we don't only invest money we come with what we call the smart capital. We come with the assistance. We come with that sense of creating a triple bottom line and bring business closer to the standards of the international world. So I know there are some investors who may think Haiti a risk country with a lot of turmoil. I would be more than happy to give more details on the return that we've been generating for our investors and how this helped. Booming the basis to fight immigration, fight lack of trust in the country, maintain Haitians where there is an opportunity because when you start very low the potential to grow fast is quite high. Thank you so much. There's been like a recent earthquake just in August and there is a return issue one of the reasons why we went to SoCAP for this event was because it responds to the earthquake and to invite investors back or to remind potential investors about the opportunities in Haiti. Again, I'm really grateful and I'm honored to talk to you all four of you gentlemen. Andy, I've admired you from afar for quite a long time and wish you success in your GSE. I don't know if Tony remembers this but I worked with him on the guarantees back in 2000. I hope that we had all the opportunities to work together again. We do also. Jean-Marc, it's been a pleasure and I hope that we get to meet in person someday. Robert, also you as well. And Tony, it's wonderful to have you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much everyone. Thank you very much.