The Ministry of Economy and Finance is Not a Political Counter

Woe to those who would treat Public Finance and the National Economy as they have already treated Haitian diplomacy: transforming it into a political garbage dump. This outcry is intended to be civic, but also intellectual, conceptual, and even didactic. In Haiti, the Ministry of Economy and Finance is perceived as the Holy Grail of technocratic power. It is seen as the key to the coffers, the signature that releases payments, the gateway to public markets and administrative privileges. But money, taken in isolation, is not wealth: it is merely its circulation. Behind the prestige of the “Minister of Finance” lies the forgotten great responsibility of the “Minister of Economy,” the one who, silently, must consider production, value creation, and the organization of work. Public Finance is merely an instrument, an accounting language through which the State translates its economic vision. It manages what already exists: revenues, expenditures, balances, debts. Economy, on the other hand, is the art of bringing into existence what does not yet exist. Finance observes and corrects; economy creates and foresees. The former relies on the rigor of figures, the latter on the power of ideas. Without economy, finance runs empty; without finance, economy remains a project without means. It is at the junction of these two dimensions that the true sovereignty of a State is determined. The Ministry of Economy and Finance should be the space where the rigor of calculation meets the vision of the nation. But in Haiti, this junction is negligible. Worse still, for several years, some politicians and wealthy individuals have shown a desire to reduce economic thought to budgetary management, strategy to mere signing, transforming the minister into a political cashier, prisoner of urgencies, instead of making him a strategist of transformation, capable of managing the present as an architecture for the future. This reduction of the ministerial role to that of a political treasurer reflects a deeper crisis: that of state economic thought. Money has become an instrument of power, not of planning. Expenditures serve clienteles, rarely a development policy. The ability to disburse is celebrated, not the ability to structure. The minister is judged on his speed in signing, not on his capacity to think. Yet, the function demands something else: an intelligence of reality, a systemic understanding of work, production, trade, and investment. A good Minister of Finance is a state economist: a mind capable of connecting public accounting to the vision of development. This position is not one of execution or activism; it is a position of thought. The one who holds it must understand that every budget is a philosophy: whether one finances a school or a road, a subsidy or an import, one chooses the type of society one builds. Figures, in this context, are not neutral: they outline the values of a country. The Haitian tragedy lies in this fascination with the cash box and this disinterest in the engine. Politicians and the wealthy dispute positions related to public finance, not because they want to plan growth, but because they want to control the flows. And the country is doing badly. My country is doing very badly. ⸻
October 08, 2025