For Haiti’s small business owners — the backbone of the country’s formal private sector — 2019 was a year of desperate improvisation and painful contraction. Restaurants, shops, repair services, and small manufacturers that had taken years to build were watching their customer bases shrink, their costs rise, and their futures grow uncertain as the political and economic crisis dragged on month after month.
Restaurant owners in Port-au-Prince described losing 60 to 70 percent of their revenue during lockdown periods and struggling to recover between protest waves. With customers afraid to go out and disposable income evaporating, many had reduced menus, cut staff, and switched to delivery and takeout models that could function during periods of reduced street safety.
Small retailers described a brutal squeeze: the cost of imported goods had risen sharply due to currency depreciation, but customers who had less money to spend were pushing back on price increases. Margins that were already thin became thinner, and businesses that could not absorb the losses were closing.
For the employees of these small businesses — often the primary breadwinners for extended families — the closures and layoffs meant immediate household crisis. The human cost of each shuttered small business was measured not just in lost GDP figures but in school fees that could not be paid, medical bills that went uncovered, and meals that went unprepared.