The Chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday called for a multilateral aid and reconstruction plan for earthquake-devastated Haiti similar to the U.S. “Marshall Plan” that rebuilt Europe after the second world war. “My belief is that Haiti, which has been incredibly hit by different things (the food and fuel prices crisis, then the hurricane, then the earthquake) needs something that is big,” said IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. “Not only a piecemeal approach, but something which is much bigger to deal with the reconstruction of the country, some kind of a Marshall Plan that we need now to implement for Haiti,” the IMF Chief said in a statement. “The urgency today is to save the people. The urgency in some weeks will be the reconstruction,” Strauss-Kahn said as officials fear as many as 200,000 people were killed in the huge 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated the capital, Port-au-Prince, on January 12.
