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Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment have urged the Unit­ed States Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Con­gress to im­me­di­ate­ly re­new the Hemi­spher­ic Op­por­tu­ni­ty through Part­ner­ship En­hance­ment for Hait­ian Pros­per­i­ty (HOPE) and the Haiti Eco­nom­ic Lift Pro­gram (HELP) Acts.

In a state­ment is­sued from the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at in George­town, Guyana, on Tues­day, re­gion­al lead­ers reaf­firmed their strong sup­port for the HOPE/HELP ini­tia­tives, which grant du­ty-free ac­cess to the US mar­ket for se­lect­ed Hait­ian tex­tile and ap­par­el prod­ucts.

The state­ment not­ed that the pref­er­en­tial trade frame­work has been es­sen­tial to Haiti’s eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment, pro­vid­ing em­ploy­ment, in­vest­ment, and stronger trade link­ages be­tween Hait­ian and Amer­i­can busi­ness­es.