The National Council of Telecommunications (CONATEL), by sake of transparency, informed that under the National Fund for Education (FNE), for the period from 15 June 2011 to September 2, 2013, a sum of 62,357,675.02 U.S. dollars was collected or is to be collected from phone companies.

These contributions come from the surplus tariff on incoming calls in the country [0.5 cents per call]. Thus, CONATEL received: 4,960,173.11 dollars from Comcel, 55,490,971.18 dollars from Digicel and 1,906,584.73 dollars from Natcom.

Recall that these levies, collected, in consultation with the partners of the telephony, are intended to finance the school compulsory and free for the most disadvantaged in Haiti.

In addition, the Council states that a sum of U.S. $ 2,474,441.95, remains to be received, 2,108,484.01 dollars from Digicel and 365,957.94 dollars from Natcom.

Note that these million dollars, do not include the fees of $1.50 U.S. dollars, on incoming and outgoing transfers, which are collected by the Central Bank under the FNE. In August 2012, these transfer fee collected by the Central Bank amounted to $ 1.9 billion Gourdes [± U.S. $ 45,238,095]. Today this amount should be around 80.78 million [estimate] or an estimated total of $145 million.

For more than 2 years that the FNE was launched, Parliament still did not ratify the Bill allowing the FNE to use these funds for education. Recall that the lower house passed the bill in August 2012 after amendments [13 months after the creation of the FNE] and transmitted it to the Senate for ratification in the same terms, before its promulgation in the official newspaper "Le Moniteur". Ratification which is still pending of Senators for over a year...

In early July, the Prime Minister, Laurent Lamothe, Simon Dieuseul Desras, President of the Senate and Tholbert Jean Alexis, President of the Chamber of Deputies, had held a joint press conference to present the population priority bills on which the Executive and Parliament work within the framework of the second ordinary session of the legislative year, the "Bill on the establishment, organization and functioning of the National Fund for Education (FNE)" appeared on the menu of the legislative agenda... Apparently the Senators seem to have difficulty understanding the meaning of the word "priority"...

See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-8941-haiti-politic-priority-bills-to-the-legislative-agenda.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-9113-haiti-education-national-fund-for-education-about-136-million-unusable.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-6379-haiti-education-the-fne-becomes-progressively-legal.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-3034-haiti-education-launch-of-the-national-fund-for-education-fne-by-martelly-update-1h03pm.html

HL/ HaitiLibre