Dick Lugar: “I rise to introduce legislation that will lead to the establishment of the Haitian-American Enterprise Fund. The…”

“I rise to introduce legislation that will lead to the establishment of the Haitian-American Enterprise Fund. The Haitian-American Enterprise Fund bill authorizes the Administration to allocate, from existing resources, such sums as required to create the Fund. The mission of the Fund will be to help empower Haiti's private sector to create jobs, which will contribute towards achieving long- term social stability and economic growth. Last month, I asked six of the most distinguished directors of the former enterprise funds in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to travel to Haiti to evaluate the current status of Haiti's private sector, the scope of U.S. Government efforts targeting sustainable job creation, and the role, if any, an enterprise fund might play there in promoting economic growth. Led by Kim Davis, a founder of the private equity firm Charlesbank Capital Partners, each member of the Delegation has had a very successful private sector career and each traveled to Haiti, at his or her own expense, in order to provide the Congress an experienced perspective as to whether proven economic growth strategies they employed to strengthen other fragile countries might work in Haiti.…”