Denis O'Brien's Digicel is upwardly mobile in Haiti

IT MIGHT be one of the poorest countries in the world but Haiti is a jewel in the crown for Denis O'Brien's Caribbean Digicel mobile phone operation.

Haiti is Digicel's biggest mobile market with more than two million subscribers, putting it slightly ahead of Jamaica and accounting for almost one in three of its overall customer numbers in the region.

Digicel's revenues in Haiti more than doubled in the 12 months to the end of March 2008, according to figures released to bond holders in New York yesterday.

Digicel dialled up revenues of $255 million in Haiti in the year just closed, up from $107 million in the previous financial year.

Only Jamaica outperformed it among the 22 other markets in which Digicel operates in the region.

The average spend in Haiti is about $10 a month, just less than half that of Jamaica and a mere fraction of what Irish people spend on their mobiles.

But it's a chunky number given the poverty in Haiti, where wages are rock bottom and poverty is high.

The performance is all the more remarkable when you consider that a large proportion of Haitians don't have electricity and have to trek to charging stations to power up their mobiles.

The accounts show that Digicel spent $134 million in "project finance debt" getting its operation off the ground in Haiti.

This debt was last year rolled up into group debt and repaid.

O'Brien is also busy on the charitable front there. The Digicel Foundation Haiti has achieved its objective of building 20 schools for 7,000 children.

"In addition, 200 teachers have been trained to work in these schools," the document adds.