A descriptive analysis of Cuba’s external sector and economic growth has been published by Jorge Mario Sanchez, of the Centro de Estudios sobre la Economia Cubana. Here is the hyperlink:
Jorge Mario Sanchez, Crecimiento económico y sector externo en Cuba
Jorge Mario Sánchez
The Centro de Estudios sobre la Economia Cubana has just completed and publicized its 2011 Annual Report on the Cuban economy. Here are hyperlinks to the main economics articles. A number of essays focussing on enterprise management have not been included here.
Juan Triana Cordoví, “Cuba 2010-2011, del crecimiento posible al desarrollo necessario“
Jorge Mario Sánchez Egozcue, “La Relación Crecimiento Económico y Sector Externo, una evaluación de la dinámica“
HAVANA, May 11, 2011 (Tierramérica) – Cuba hopes to revive its sugar industry as part of the recently announced economic changes and take advantage of good international prices for what was once the Caribbean island’s main export.
Original Article published here: Sugar Boost for the Cuban Economy
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55586
After a disastrous harvest in 2010, Cuba met its target for the current harvest several weeks ahead of schedule, although official media have not released specific figures. Specialists estimate that the goal for this year was 1.2 million tons.
A total of 39 sugar mills were in operation this season, and a dozen were kept running in April and some even into early May. “They will keep working for as long as efficiency permits,” Ministry of Sugar spokesman Liobel Pérez told Tierramérica. “All in all, this harvest has been very positive,” he added.
In comparison with last year, industrial and agricultural output has improved, costs were lower than planned, and inputs and resources arrived when they were needed. “The potential is huge. The policy now is to take maximum advantage of the installed capacity,” said Pérez, the communications director for the ministry.
The sector seems to be bouncing back after touching rock bottom. The 2010 harvest was the worst in 100 years. At the time, state media outlets blamed the disaster on poor planning policies, obstinacy and a lack of control, as well as the error of compromising the development of the industry by milling sugar reserved for the next season.
The strategy to revive the sugar industry, which was once the driving force of the Cuban economy, includes expanding the area under sugar cane cultivation from the current 750,000 hectares to over a million hectares, according to a researcher on the subject who asked to remain anonymous.
“Resources should also been invested in repairing equipment, since the poor condition of the equipment in use tends to cause frequent interruptions during the harvest. Failing to make these investments would be a huge mistake,” he added. In any event, this point is included in the economic and social policy document approved at the sixth congress of the ruling Communist Party of Cuba, held in April.
According to the policy document, the primary objective of the sugar industry will be to increase sugar cane production. It was also noted that the links between sugar cane growers and sugar mills need to be streamlined. During discussions, delegates at the congress stressed the need for sugar cane plantations to be located closer to the refining facilities.
The strategy also includes diversifying production through the most efficient use of sugar cane derivative production facilities, taking into account the current conditions on the international market, a factor that should also be considered when setting prices for the purchase of sugar cane and sugar from producers.
There are plans to gradually increase the production of sugar and sugar cane derivatives until enough hard currency revenues are generated to totally finance operation costs and cover investments made in the sector, finally achieving a net contribution to country’s coffers.
The plans encompass the creation or recovery of facilities for the production of sugar cane derivatives, with priority placed on alcohol, animal feed and “bioproducts” in which the sugar industry has proven its capacity.
Another area of development of the sector involves increasing the generation of electricity from bagasse, a by-product of sugar production, and other sugar cane and forestry waste products, creating the conditions for the industry to continue generating power during inactive periods.
But any strategy must reverse the process of decapitalisation and deindustrialisation of the sugar sector in recent years, according to specialists. Because of the sector’s significant potential to exercise a multiplier effect on the rest of the economy, it should be restored to its proper place with a new vision.
For his part, economist Armando Nova emphasises the need to develop a “bio-energy agroindustry” to create new sources of renewable energy and produce food and raw materials, generating exports while permitting the substitution of imports.
Unconfirmed reports indicate that the government is planning to convert the Ministry of Sugar into a union of state enterprises under which the entire sugar agroindustry would be reorganized, from the planting of sugar cane to the production of sugar. The industry could also be opened up further to foreign investment, which is currently limited to sugar cane derivatives.
After the fall of sugar prices on the world market – which dropped to less than six cents a pound (454 grams) – and the decapitalisation of equipment and machinery, Cuba restructured its sugar industry in 2002 and 2004, reducing the area of sugar cane plantations and shutting down over half of the 156 sugar mills in operation at the time.
But international prices rallied, reaching a high of over 30 cents a pound in 2010 and currently sitting at just over 25 cents.
According to official figures, during the “good times” of trade with the now defunct Soviet Union and its allies, Cuba’s sugar exports once totaled up to four billion dollars a year.
*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank. (END)
Maintenance at the Australia Sugar Mill, November 1995, Photo by Arch Ritter
The Bildner Center at City University of New York Graduate Center organized a conference entitled “Cuba Futures: Past and Present” from March 31 to April 2. The very rich and interdisciplinary program can be found here: Cuba Futures Conference, Program.
I had the honor of making a presentation in the Opening Plenary Panel. The Power Point presentation is available at “Cuba’s Economic Reform Process under President Raul Castro.”
The papers from the 2010 meetings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy have just been posted on the ASCE Web Site and can be found at Papers and Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of ASCE.
As usual, a wide range of excellent papers are presented at ASCE’s annual meetings Many essays include valuable, original and ground-breaking analyses on a wide range of economic as well as socio-economic and politico-economic issues..
A Table of Contents with hyperlinked titles of the papers is included below.
The Cuban Economy in 2010 as Seen by Economists Within the Island and Other Observers
Joaquín P. Pujol
La Economía Cubana: ¿Tiempos de Esperanza?
Oscar Espinosa Chepe
Crisis Management of Cuban International Liquidity
Luis R. Luis
If It Were Just the Marabú… Cuba’s Agriculture 2009-10
G.B. Hagelberg
The Numbers Diet: Food Imports as Economic Indicators
Lauren Gifford
Sergio Díaz-Briquets
Envios de Remesas a Cuba: Desarrollo, Evolución e Impacto
Emilio Morales Dopico
Dashed Expectations: Raúl Castro’s Management of The Cuban Economy, 2006–2010
Jorge F. Pérez-López
Cuba: ¿Hacia otro “Periodo Especial”?
Mario A. González-Corzo
Cuban Education and Human Capital Formation
Enrique S. Pumar
La Masonería Cubana y su Contribución a la Sociedad Civil
Jorge Luis Romeu
Ted Henken
El Insostenible Apoyo Económico de Venezuela a Cuba y sus Implicaciones
Rolando H. Castañeda
Cuba-Venezuela Health Diplomacy: The Politics of Humanitarianism
Maria C. Werlau
British Policy-Making and Our Leyland in Havana (1963–1964)
Maria Carla Chicuén
La Desigualdad en Cuba: El Color Cuenta
Natalie Kitroeff
Orlando R. Villaverde
A Survey of the Relationship between Cuba and China: A Chinese Perspective
Pin Zuo
Michael Aranda
Empowering the Cuban People Through Access to Technology
Cuba Study Group
Elaine Scheye
Larry Catá Backer
Racismo Estructural en Cuba y Disidencia Política: Breves Antecedentes
Ramón Humberto Colás
Arbitration and Mediation: Impartial Forums to Resolve International Commercial Disputes in Cuba
Rolando Anillo-Badia
Gazing at the Green Light: The Legal and Business Aspects of Real Property Investment in Cuba
Richard M. David
The Creation and Evolution of the Legal Black Hole at Guantánamo Bay
Michael J. Strauss
Las Relaciones Cuba-Israel: A la Espera de una Nueva Etapa
Arturo López-Levy
Revolutionary Cuba’s GDP: A Survey of Methods and Estimates
Jorge F. Pérez-López
Philip Liu and Rafael Romeu
Cuba’s Attempts at Democracy: The Colony
Roger R. Betancourt
Lessons Learned from 20 Years of Privatization: Albania, Estonia and Russia
Jorge A. Sanguinetty and Tania Mastrapa
The Cuban Tourism Sector: A Note On Performance in the first Decade of the 21st Century
María Dolores Espino
Antonio R. Zamora
On February 24, The Cuba Standard published an analysis by Jorge R. Piñón by on Cuba’s energy sector focusing in particular on Sherritt International, which has a joint venture in oil extraction and refining, natural gas, electric power and nickel mining, concentrating, refining and marketing.
The full article can be found here: http://www.cubastandard.com/2011/02/23/pinon-on-energy-analyzing-sherritt/
An introduction to Piñón’s analysis is presented below.
Crude oil: Crude oil prices reached this week a 30-month high of nearly $100 per barrel, with industrial residual fuel oil prices close behind at a 28-month high of $80. These price increases are reflected in Sherritt’s year-end 2010 financial reports released today.
Cuba’s onshore and coastal 2010 crude oil production is estimated at approximately 50,000 barrels per day, of which 11,128 barrels per day represents Sherritt’s net working interest (equity) production. This is an 11-percent decrease from 2009 levels of 12,489 barrels per day. Sherritt sells this production to state oil company Cupet at a discounted U.S. Gulf Coast residual fuel oil price.
Sherritt and Cuba do not realize the true value of the island’s crude oil production — based on its refined products yield — because Cuban crude is used directly as industrial fuel for electric power plants, instead of optimizing its inherent value by processing it into high-value refined products such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
Cuba’s realized crude oil value could substantially rise if it was able to market its crude oil to U.S. Gulf Coast refining companies.Realized prices should also rise once Cuba is able to monetize its heavy-oil production in planned conversion facilities at Cienfuegos and Matanzas.
High oil prices negatively impact Cuba’s balance of payments in two ways: Not only as the value of its crude oil imports from Venezuela under the 2000 Convenio Integral de Cooperación services for oil barter agreement increases, but also as it has to purchase part of its domestic crude oil production from Sherritt. We estimate that the total value of Venezuelan petroleum imports and the purchase of Sherritt equity production for 2010 will be approximately $2.894 billion. 
Nickel: The good news is that nickel prices also reached this week a 24-month high of $13 per pound, an increase of 177 percent from a low of $4.50 in February 2009. However, this is still far from the contract record high of $24 a pound in May 2007.
Canada’s Sherritt reported nickel and cobalt revenues for 2010 of $453.1 million, reflecting a 29-percent improvement over 2009 revenues of $350.7 million. The reported figures only reflect Sherritt’s 50-percent interest in the Moa/Saskatchewan nickel joint venture with Cubaníquel; therefore a similar improvement should mirror its Cuban partner operations.
Cuba and Sherritt offset receivables between Sherritt’s nickel and crude oil operations, therefore alleviating Cuba’s crude oil negative cash flow impact on the national balance of payments.
Jorge R. Piñón was president of Amoco Corporate Development Company Latin America from 1991 to 1994; in this role he was responsible for managing the business relationship between Amoco Corp. and regional state oil companies, energy ministries and energy regulatory agencies
A complete English translation of the “Lineamientos” has just been published by Walter Lippmann, the Editor-in-Chief of CubaNews , the free Yahoo news group on Cuba.
The “Draft Guide for Economic and Social Policy” for the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party is available here: http://www.walterlippmann.com/pcc-draft-economic-and-social-policy-guidelines-2010.html
What follows here is the Blog entry for November 11, 2010 on the “Guidelines”.
I. “Structural Adjustment” on a Major Scale
On Tuesday, November 9, a major document appeared for sale in Cuba entitled “Proyecto de Lineamientos de La Political Economica y Social” or “Draft Guide for Economic and Social Policy.” The purpose of the “Guide’ presumably is to spark and to shape public discussion and education on the economic matters that will be the focus of the long-postponed Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party to take place in April, 2011. It also provides the essentials of the new approach that will likely be adopted at the Sixth Congress.
It can be found in its entirety, courtesy of the Blog Caf Fuerte. (http://cafefuerte.com/, here: Projecto de Lineamientos de la Politica Economica y Social,
The “Guide” is a broad-reaching and comprehensive document that puts forward 291 propositions for the improvement of the functioning of the Cuban economy. It signals a break in the four years of near inaction that the Cuban economy endured since Raul Castro took over as acting and then actual President – and the ten years of paralysis from about 1995 to 2006 under President Fidel. It amounts to a major process of “structural adjustment” of the sort that was begun in 1992-1994, but was then stalled when the Cuban economy appeared to rebound after 1994. The document is also a contradiction and maybe a “slap-in-the-face” for Fidel Castro, as it indeed indicates that the Fidelista-style Cuban model – his life’s work – is not working. (See “Fidel’s No-Good Very Bad Day” and The “FIDEL” Models Never Worked; Soviet and Venezuelan Subsidization Did.)
II. General Character of the Proposals
The Table of Contents provides a quick idea of the scope of the document:
Introduction
Contours of Economic and Social Policy
I Economic Management Model
II Macroeconomic Policies
III External Economic Policies
IV Investment Policy
V Science, Technology and Innovation Policy
VI Social Policy
VII Agroindustrial Policy
VIII Industrial and Energy Policy ix
IX Tourism Policy
X Transport Policy
XI Construction, Housing, and Hydraulic Resource Policy
xii Commercial Policy.
The Introduction summarizes the basic objectives required to overcome the principal problems of the economy. These include putting into productive use the unused lands constituting almost 50% of total, raising agricultural yields, developing new mechanisms to reverse the process of industrial and infrastructural de-capitalization, eliminating excess and redundant employment, raising labor productivity, recovery of export capacity in traditional exports, undertake studies in order to eliminate monetary dualism, and provide improved capacities for more decentralized regional development.
The “Contour” section then states that “…only socialism is capable of overcoming the difficulties and preserving the conquests of the Revolution, and the implementation of the economic model prioritizes planification and not the market”. However, the next paragraph states “…socialism is equality of rights and equality of opportunity for all citizens, not egalitarianism.” The latter sounds less like “socialism” and more like “social democrat” if not the common approach of most Western countries. The latter quotation makes the former somewhat hard to interpret if not meaningless.
The document then goes on to list the 291 propositions under the 12 different headings. A few of the more interesting propositions are summarized below:
III. Preliminary Evaluation
This document will receive a great deal of attention inside and outside Cuba. It provides fodder – along with the recent legislation on self-employment – for analysts and observers of Cuba, who have had little of hard substance on which to base their analyses of Cuban policy under the “Raulista” Presidency for some time.
In some senses, this document is remarkable. It sets out an ambitious reform program for much of the Cuban economy. It may indeed constitute a “Wish List” of all the types of policy improvements and changes that would be nice to have. The question is “can and will they be implemented?”
This document also is a major risk for the Raul Castro Administration. It provides a check-list of tasks that will be difficult to achieve. If future implementation and economic performance is far below the expectations that are now being raised to high levels, there could well be a serious fall-out for the Government and the Party.
The document is also broad and ambitious but does not set any clear priorities and does not propose a sequence of actions. Everything can’t be done at once. How should the policy changes be phased or sequenced?
Some observers are skeptical and perhaps cynical regarding the “Guide” – for good historical reasons. In her Blog Entry entitled The Art of Speaking Without Speaking (http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/?p=2088) Yoani Sanchez states:
When you grow up decoding each line that appears in the newspapers, you manage to find, among the rhetoric, the nugget of information that motivates, the hidden shreds of the news. We Cubans have become detectives of the unexpressed, experts in discarding the chatter and discovering — deep down — what is really driving things. The Draft Guidelines for the Communist Party’s VI Congress is a good exercise to sharpen our senses, a model example to evaluate the practice of speaking without speaking, which is what state discourse is here.
The Guide undoubtedly could be seen as an economic rescue program designed to rescue also the Communist party of Cuba, which faces steady de-legitimation as the economy deteriorates – even as the official GDP statistics appear to rise steadily.
What is missing from the “Guide”? Here is a first brief listing. Further analysis will be incorporated here later.
1. Nothing is said regarding labor rights. A vital part of the reform approach if labor is to be used effectively would be freedom of association, collective bargaining and the right to strike. In the absence of these, pressures and insights from the grass roots to improve economic policy and its effectiveness are suppressed.
2. Nothing is said regarding freedom of expression and the right to criticize the policies and institutions openly, honestly and continuously. The absence of this right leads to economic inefficiency and corruption as argued elsewhere. ( Freedom of Expression, Economic Self-Correction and Self-Renewal)
3. No further elaboration of how the self-employment or micro-enterprise sector is presented, suggesting that the recent reforms are the end of the journey not a first step.
4. The dedication to centralized determination of prices is problematic. If maintained strictly, it would make the decentralized decision-making allotted to enterprises for investment, the hiring of resource inputs, etc. meaningless, and the problems of trying to run the economy from a few office towers in Havana would continue.
Perhaps surprisingly, Espacio Laical, the journal of the CONSEJO ARQUIDIOCESANO DE LAICOS DE LA HABANA, has become a most interesting medium for economic and political and religious analyses and exchanges. Its circulation in digital format within Cuba via the “Intranet” is unclear. However, it has produced a variety of works by some of Cuba’s leading economic analysts including those in the main Research Institute focusing on the on the domestic Cuban economy, namely the Centro de Estudios sobre la Economia Cubana, (CEEC), ttp://www.ceec.uh.cu/. Many of the analysts in CEEC publish their work in Espacio Laical or other sources outside their own institution, which unfortunately has a rather minimalist web site at this time, .
Here is an Index of Economic Articles that have appeared in Espacio Laical, with most of them hyperlinked to the original source.
Barbería, Lorena – Remesas, pobreza y desigualdad en Cuba. (Año 4 / No.14)
Calvo, Cristina – X Semana Social Católica: Globalización y desarrollo integral inclusivo. (Año 6 / No.23)
Espacio Laical – Economía cubana (portada) (Año 4 / No.14)
- Economía cubana: retos y opciones. (Año 4 / No.14)
Everleny Pérez, Omar – Se extiende el cuentapropismo en Cuba. (Año 6 / No.24)
Laborem , boletín del Movimiento de Trabajadores Cristianos (MTC) - Sin quitarle una letra. (Año I / No.1)
La Quincena. – Textos para la reforma social. (Año I / No.4)
Mesa, Armando – Mercado y solidaridad: ¿un debate intergeneracional? (portada) (Año 4 / No.14)
- Mercado y solidaridad: ¿un debate intergeneracional? (Año 4 / No.14)
Mesa-Lago, Carmelo – Posible restablecimiento de relaciones económicas entre Cuba y Estados Unidos: Ventajas y desventajas. (Año 4 / No.14)
- La crisis financiera mundial y sus efectos en Cuba (Año 4 / No.16)
-¿Se recupera el mundo de la crisis económica global? (Año 5 / No.20)
- X Semana Social Católica: Implicaciones sociales y económicas para el sistema de seguridad social en
- El desempleo en Cuba: de oculto a visible. (Año 6 / No.24)
Monreal González, Pedro – El problema económico de Cuba. (Año 4 / No.14)
Pérez Villanueva, Omar Everleny – X Semana Social Católica: Notas recientes sobre la economía en Cuba. (Año 6 / No.23)
Robles, Reydel – X Semana Social Católica: Presentación al panel sobre economía y sociedad. (Año 6 / No.23)
Veiga González, Roberto – Propiedad privada en Cuba: una percepción de futuro. (Año I / No.4)
Vidal Alejandro Pavel – Redimensionando la dualidad monetaria (Año 3 / No.11)
- Los salarios, los precios y la dualidad monetaria. (Año 4 / No.14)
- El PIB cubano en 2009 y la crisis global. (Año 5 / No.18)
- Los cambios estructurales e institucionales. (Año 6 / No.21)
- X Semana Social Católica: La actual crisis bancaria cubana. (Año 6 / No.23)
- Se extiende el cuentapropismo en Cuba. (Año 6 / No.24)
Journal of Latin American Studies. 42, 689–717, Cambridge University Press, 2010
Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Pavel Vidal have teamed up to produce a fine analysis of the impacts of the world recession of 2009-201o on Cuba, its macro-economy and its social sectors. It is certainly encouraging to see such cooperation in the economics discipline! The article can be found here: Pavel Vidal and Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Cuba economic social impact crisis-JLAS-11 (2)
Abstract.The mechanisms by which the world economic crisis has been transmitted from developed to developing economies are conditioned by domestic factors that may attenuate or accentuate external economic shocks and their adverse social effects. Cuba is a special case : it is an open economy and hence vulnerable to trade growth transmission mechanisms, but at the same time, it is a socialist economy with universal social services. This article reviews the literature, summarises Cuba’s domestic socio-economic strengths and weaknesses prior to the crisis, evaluates the effects of the crisis on the macro-economic and social services indicators, assesses the government response and suggests alternative socio-economic policies.
Carmelo Mesa-Lago
Pavel Vidal
By Arch Ritter
As I trudge through the snow to the University here in Ottawa with the temperature below minus 30 degrees Celsius (or about minus 25 Fahrenheit) in a Canadian “cold snap”, my thoughts turn towards the Tropics and Cuba and also to global warming. This is a characteristic shared by many Canadians in winter- though I also must confess that I am always thinking about Cuba. .
As everyone knows, Cuba has regained its position as a foremost tropical tourist destination. Canada has been the largest single national source of tourists consistently from 1990 to 2009. (See Chart 1) By 2009, Canadian citizens were by far the most numerous with about 915,000 tourist “arrivals”, or 37.6% of total (see Table1). Tourism is of course a major source of foreign exchange earnings for Cuba, larger than any single merchandise export but also smaller than other service exports (mainly medical and educational services.)
Most Canadian tourists head to the beach with a package tour – seldom making it to Havana or another city. For this reason, they have been sometimes derided as “el cheapo” tourists who spend as little as they can in the Cuban economy. There may be some truth in this, but most other tourists also are in similar package tours. Foreign exchange earnings from Canadian tourism were likely in the area of US$ 882 million for 2008, (calculated as 37.6% of total tourism earnings of U.S. $ 2,346.9 million.) If one takes both Canadian tourism plus Canadian merchandise imports (mainly nickel) from Cuba into consideration, Canada contributed about U.S. $1.6 billion in 2008, a substantial proportion of Cuba’s foreign exchange availability.
When US citizens are free to travel to Cuba, there undoubtedly will be a “tsunami” of curiosity tourism, sun, sea and sand tourism, “snowbird” tourism, convention tourism, cultural and sport tourism, medical tourism, “March-Break” tourism, and retirement tourism. Will Canadian tourists be squeezed out and priced out of the market as demand increases? Perhaps, for a while. But I expect that Cuba will continue to expand its tourist facilities of all sorts very rapidly. Until “global warming” has eliminated the winter up here in the True North, or until escalating jet fuel prices make air travel prohibitively expensive, my guess is that Canadians will continue to head south in winter and Cuba will continue as a top choice location.
Varadero Cuba
Guardalavaca, Cuba
