International financial institutions confirmed that Haiti’s economy had contracted for the sixth consecutive year in 2023, with GDP declining further as the security crisis drove economic activity to ever lower levels and as the cumulative damage of years of contraction compounded the challenges facing businesses, workers, and households trying to survive in an increasingly hostile economic environment.
Inflation remained extraordinarily high, running at rates that eroded the purchasing power of household incomes faster than they could be sustained. For workers in the formal economy — a minority of the workforce — nominal wages that had not kept pace with inflation represented significant real income losses. For the majority in the informal economy, the combination of market disruption, reduced customer demand, and rising input costs had compressed livelihoods to subsistence levels or below.
Foreign investment, already minimal given Haiti’s political instability, had essentially disappeared. The few businesses that had committed capital to Haiti in previous years were managing existing operations rather than expanding. New investment from either domestic or foreign sources required a security and governance environment that Haiti could not provide. The investment drought meant no job creation, no economic diversification, and no new revenue base for the government.
The World Bank updated its poverty estimates to reflect the deterioration, finding that the share of Haitians living below extreme poverty thresholds had increased significantly from pre-crisis levels. The economic data told the story of a development process not just stalled but reversed — years of modest economic progress unwound by a crisis whose resolution remained as distant as ever.