HIFIVE Success Story: Expanding Local Capacity for Agricultural Lending in Haiti

Increasing agricultural production and revenue are important goals in Haiti, where even though 65% of the population is employed in agriculture, food shortages are still common. A key element in expanding production is increasing the availability of agricultural credit from Haiti’s financial institutions. However, convincing financial institutions to expand agricultural lending can be difficult because they perceive it as high-risk for the institution. USAID/Haiti’s HIFIVE project, an Associate Award under the FIELD-Support LWA, is addressing these issues with new risk mitigation and incentive structures.

This success story explores recent developments at Le Levier, a federation of 20 credit unions with 200,000 member-clients, which is participating in an innovative USAID credit guarantee program that provides 50% risk coverage for a variety of agricultural credits.