Data Insights

Volumes of petroleum product imports in Haiti from 2009 to 2025. The 2025 data is provisional (last updated: August 7, 2025) and should be interpreted with caution.

Diesel, the main fuel for heavy transport and electricity generation, remains the most imported product, but volumes have been declining year after year since 2018.

Gasoline more than doubled between 2009 and 2024.

Kerosene, once a substitute energy source for thousands of households, is in near-collapse (−87% over the period).

Haiti has received more than $1 billion per year in foreign aid over the last two decades. Yet its socioeconomic situation tells a different story.

Official development assistance (ODA) is government aid designed to promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries. It includes grants, soft loans, and technical assistance, but excludes military aid.

For decades, ODA to Haiti remained modest, rarely exceeding $500 million annually. Starting in the early 2000s, flows began rising steadily. Over time, the country has become increasingly dependent on foreign aid.

This raises an important question: why does the data show a significant increase in development assistance over the last two decades, while Haiti's overall socioeconomic situation continues to decline?

GDP per capita is a key measure of people's average income. It helps compare income levels across countries and track how they change over time, making it especially useful for understanding trends in economic growth and living standards.

It is calculated as the value of all final goods and services produced in a country in a given year (the gross domestic product), divided by the midyear population.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic are two countries that share the same island, Hispaniola. Despite this, the two nations have developed very differently over recent decades.

In 1985, the Dominican Republic had roughly twice the GDP per capita of Haiti. Over the years, the gap only grew wider. By 2024, the average economic output per person in the Dominican Republic was 5 times higher than in Haiti.

In 2025, the total amount of remittances received by Haiti from abroad reached approximately 4.5 billion USD.

79% of this amount came from the United States, representing 3.65 billion USD. Canada and France ranked just behind, each accounting for 5%, followed by the Dominican Republic with 148.3 million USD (3%) and Chile with 97.4 million USD (2%).

It should be noted that this data only covers formal transfers recorded through money transfer operators. The actual figures could be underestimated if one takes into account financial flows passing through informal channels not recorded by the banking system.

In 2020, the annual per capita alcohol consumption in Haiti was 3.1 liters of pure alcohol, on par with Jamaica, but well behind Cuba (5.38 L) and the Dominican Republic (6.5 L), the neighboring countries in the region.

A significant drop was recorded around 2010, likely linked to the earthquake of that same year, which is thought to have disrupted alcohol import channels, local production, and more broadly the purchasing power of Haitian households.

It should also be noted that a significant share of alcohol consumed in Haiti falls outside formal channels: homemade beer, clairin, local spirits, and traditional alcoholic beverages produced and exchanged outside any official recording system.

This indicator nevertheless attempts to address this methodological blind spot by combining recorded consumption with an estimate of unrecorded consumption, calculated on a three-year average and adjusted for tourist flows.