The Government of Haiti is committed to privatizing the management of a large number of state owned enterprises. Haiti's nine principal businesses: the flour mill, cement factory, telephone company (TELECO), electric company (EDH), port authority, airport authority, edible oil plant and two commercial banks are slated for privatization under the terms of the law on the modernization of public enterprises. The government established the CMEP (Commission for the Modernization of Public Enterprizes) in January 1997. The CMEP is made up five members to oversee the privatization program. In February 1997 the CMEP announced a time-bound action plan to guide the privatization process. The flour mill and cement plant were privatized in 1999.

Nevertheless an intensely polarized debate has taken place over the issue of privatization largely because of the ideological rhetoric used by the Aristide government to attack privatization and the Clinton Administration to advocate it. The result has been to deflect attention from the far more important question of how to privatize in the Haitian context. The popular fear of privatization results from Haiti's pattern of monopoly, luxury consumption and the transferring of private profits into foreign accounts rather than into reinvestment in Haiti.