Haiti’s President went to the White House yesterday with a vision of a Caribbean paradise waiting to be rebuilt after January’s catastrophic earthquake — and a price tag that could rise to $14 billion (£9 billion).

President Préval and his Prime Minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, are in Washington with a sales pitch on which their country depends — but which depends, in turn, on persuading recession-hit donors that the corruption that has bedevilled Haiti for generations can at last be overcome.

In a document that the Haitian delegation calls simply “the plan”, the slums and rubble of Port-au-Prince make way for a model city of cycle paths, beachfront boardwalks and ecofriendly housing. The economy roars back to life, thanks to tourism and cash crops such as coffee, mangoes and freshly cut flowers, and a hugely ambitious social engineering project permanently relocates at least half a million refugees to suburbs outside the devastated capital as the beginning of a new Haitian middle class.

Mr Bellerive has spoken of the plan as a road map to the “Haiti we are all dreaming of”.

It is a far cry from the reality that he has briefly left behind, where 1.2 million Haitians remain homeless. As the rains approach, barely a quarter of them have received tents or plastic sheeting, and estimates of the earthquake’s death toll have stabilised at about 220,000.

President Obama appeared more concerned than his visitor with this reality yesterday. “The situation on the ground remains dire,” he told an audience in the White House Rose Garden. “People should be under no illusion that the crisis is over.”

While Mr Obama said that there was still a desperate need for food, shelter and medicines, Mr Préval has urged donors in recent days to stop sending food aid and to focus on “agricultural aid” — the seeds, fertilisers and basic farm tools without which rural Haiti will not be able to capitalise on the rainy season and feed itself.

The striking difference in emphasis reflects the challenge facing foreign donors of how to sustain a reconstruction effort led by a Government whose ministries remain in ruins and whose control over Haitian society was minimal even before the earthquake.

That challenge will come to a head at a big donor conference in New York later this month, at which Haitian officials will present their plan as an investment in an entirely new country, capitalising on the disaster to erase the legacy of slavery and colonialism that is blamed for its status as the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. The goodwill generated by the crisis means that its funding requests are likely to be matched by donors’ pledges, analysts believe.

“The catch comes in ensuring that the plan is executed in a timely, transparent way,” Ciro de Falco, the head of the Inter-American Development Bank’s Haitian task force, told The Times. “The donor community is worried about corruption and so is the Government.”

To assuage these concerns a “multidonor trust fund”, similar to one set up after the 2004 Asian tsunami, is expected to be established and run by World Bank and Haitian officials. An “executing agency” led by Haitians, UN and other international staff will supervise the massive rebuilding projects envisioned in “the plan”. Until Haiti’s own Government re-emerges from the rubble, the agency will, in effect, run the country.

Movers and shakers

—The city of Antigua Guatemala was founded in 1541 after the old capital flooded. The new capital was destroyed by an earthquake in 1773. In 1776 the capital moved to Guatemala City

—The town of Pripyat in Ukraine was founded in 1970 to house workers at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. After the disaster residents were moved in two days to Slavutych, 25 miles away. Pripyat remains radioactive and deserted

—The Italian town of Craco was hit by earthquakes in the mid-20th century. In 1964 its inhabitants were moved to a nearby valley; it is now deserted

— In 1971 a Canadian survey revealed that the village of Lemieux, Ontario, was built on a clay bed at risk of landslides. It was relocated in 1991. Two years later the original village was swallowed by a landslip.

Source: Times database