Haiti's middle class would be reduced to 2% of the population today, « due to lack of modernity ».

By Jean Venel Casséus At the opening of the Banque de la République d’Haïti (BRH) forum dedicated to payment digitalization and gender equity, this October 3, 2025, the Minister of Economy and Finance, Alfred Metellus, presented a chilling observation: in fifteen years, Haiti's middle class would have shrunk from 7% to 2% of the population. According to his criteria, this category includes those whose monthly incomes range between 400 and 4,000 US dollars. In other words, fewer than one in fifty Haitians would today have resources allowing them to project into the future with a minimum of economic security. The middle class, in any society, is the bedrock of stability and the engine of consumption. It drives investment in education, supports cultural activity, and fosters innovation. In Haiti, its contraction is not just a cold statistic: it reveals a disintegration of the social fabric. Social mobility becomes rare, and poverty tends to engulf intermediate spaces. This erosion fuels exodus, weakens the state, and undermines collective trust. For Alfred Metellus, this decline is linked to the archaism of the national economy, still dominated by the informal sector, low productivity, an almost exclusive dependence on imports, and finance that primarily benefits established large groups. As long as the economy remains stuck in these logics, inequalities will continue to widen: a minority monopolizes formal channels while the majority survives through subsistence activities. The minister emphasized that modernization cannot happen without the manifest will, even the complicity, of private actors, particularly banks. The word is strong: complicity. He suggests that the financial sector, instead of confining itself to a logic of rent-seeking and exclusion, should assume a role as a strategic partner. Payment digitalization, for example, only makes sense if it opens up real access to banking services for millions of currently excluded citizens. Reducing inequality is not just about redistribution. It is, first and foremost, about transforming the rules of the game: modernizing infrastructure, encouraging innovation, diversifying local production, and expanding access to credit. The state must establish a clear and stable framework, but banks, businesses, and investors must agree to participate in a dynamic that goes beyond immediate profit. The social divide in Haiti is also a divide of responsibility: that of the economic elites towards a population left behind. Behind the figures announced by Metellus lies a political question: what kind of society do Haitians want? A society where 2% live « in the average » while 98% survive? Or a society that would agree to open its economic channels to create a true foundation of shared prosperity? Inequality is not an inevitability. It is the product of choices. And this is what the minister's observation forcefully, yet also with concern, reminds us.

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October 3, 2025