Haiti’s garment manufacturing industry — one of the country’s few significant sources of formal employment — navigated an extremely difficult 2020, managing the twin challenges of COVID-19 pandemic disruptions and the continuing political instability that had plagued the sector for years. Factory operators reported significant disruptions to production and orders as international buyers reduced their sourcing from Haiti in the face of operational uncertainty.
The implementation of COVID protocols in factory settings presented genuine challenges. Maintaining social distancing on production lines designed for close proximity work was difficult without significantly reducing output. Providing adequate ventilation in buildings not designed for pandemic conditions required costly retrofitting. Testing workers, who numbered in the tens of thousands across the industrial parks north of Port-au-Prince, was logistically complex and expensive.
Some international buyers used the disruptions of 2020 as an opportunity to consolidate their sourcing in larger, more established manufacturers in other countries, reducing their Haiti orders. The sector, which had been slowly building market share under preferential trade arrangements, lost some of the ground it had gained in previous years.
Despite the setbacks, advocates for the Haitian garment sector argued that the fundamentals supporting Haiti’s competitiveness — proximity to the US market, preferential tariff access, and a willing workforce — remained intact. They called for sustained international business commitment to Haiti as a sourcing destination and for government policies that would improve the operating environment for manufacturers.