838.51 Cooperation Program/3
Press Release Issued by the Department of State, May 5, 1941
The Governments of the United States of America and the Republic of Haiti announce that agreement has been reached in principle regarding a long-term program of cooperation in the development of Haitian agriculture and economy. The central feature of this program will be a broad plan of rubber developments; an increase in banana plantings; the planting of oil crops, spices, drug plants, food plants, and fiber plants, cacao improvement; the development of Haitian forestry resources; and the stimulation of small handicraft industries. Although details for the carrying out of the project are yet to be worked out, it is contemplated that the development will begin at carefully selected central plantations from which a small grower industry may be stimulated and directed, and technical information and assistance provided. The program is based on numerous surveys and long experience of the United States Department of Agriculture, which has already established in Haiti breeding gardens for rubber plants and an experiment station.
[Page 367]This cooperative program will also involve an extension in the amount of up to $500,000 in the existing contract entered into in 1938 by the Export-Import Bank and the J. G. White Engineering Corporation, to permit the completion of certain highway and irrigation projects now in process and to provide adequate transportation facilities to the areas suitable for the rubber and general agricultural development.
Discussions which have led to the agreements in principle in the above sense have been conducted between the appropriate agencies of the Government of the United States and His Excellency Elie Lescot, Haitian Minister to Washington and President-elect of the Republic of Haiti.