Haiti: Currency & Financial System

Haiti's currency, the gourde, was introduced in 1813, replacing the livre at a rate of eight livres and five sous to one gourde. The currency was revalued several times over the following decades, including a ten-to-one conversion in 1870 and a three-hundred-to-one conversion in 1872, before being linked to the French franc in 1881. In 1912, Haiti pegged the gourde to the United States dollar at five gourdes per dollar, a fixed rate that held for more than seven decades until the peg was abandoned in 1989.

Since 1989, the gourde has floated against other currencies, and its value is managed by the Banque de la Republique d'Haiti (BRH), the country's central bank. The BRH was created in 1979, when the former National Bank of the Republic of Haiti was split into a central bank and a separate commercial bank; wholly state-owned, the BRH issues the gourde and oversees banking regulation. As of 2025, the gourde traded at roughly 130 to the US dollar, and consumer price inflation stood near 28 percent, reflecting years of currency depreciation amid prolonged economic and security disruption.

Remittances from Haitians living abroad are a critical pillar of the country's financial system. As of 2023, the most recent year for which comparable figures are available, these transfers totaled roughly 4.2 billion US dollars, equal to about 21 percent of Haiti's gross domestic product, among the highest shares of any economy in the Western Hemisphere. With much of the population underserved by traditional banks, remittances flow through a mix of commercial banks and licensed money-transfer operators, making diaspora support a central source of household income and foreign-currency liquidity.