Construction activity across Haiti ground to a near halt in 2019 as the combination of cement shortages, currency depreciation, supply chain disruptions, and collapsed investor confidence froze both public infrastructure projects and private construction. Hardware stores in Port-au-Prince reported severe shortages of cement, steel, and other construction materials, with the supplies that were available costing dramatically more than before the crisis.
The construction sector had been one of the more dynamic sectors of Haiti’s formal economy in recent years, driven by reconstruction activity, private housing demand, and some public works investment. The crisis of 2019 brought this activity to an abrupt halt, with effects that rippled through the supply chain from cement producers to hardware retailers to the informal laborers who depended on construction work for their daily income.
Day laborers in the construction sector — among the most economically vulnerable workers in Haiti’s economy, earning daily wages with no job security or benefits — found work almost impossible to find. Construction site foremen reported that jobs they had been preparing for months before the crisis were indefinitely postponed, leaving workers who had been counting on those jobs with no income and no recourse.
The freeze in construction also meant that Haiti’s chronic infrastructure deficit continued to worsen. Roads that needed repair remained unrepaired. Drainage systems that needed upgrading remained clogged. The accumulated cost of deferred infrastructure maintenance was a debt that would eventually have to be paid, with interest, by future generations of Haitians.