Tag Archives: Foreign Investment

Nuevo Libro: APUNTES SOBRE ECONOMÍA CUBANAY COVID-19

CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS DE LA ECONOMÍA CUBANA, Universidad de la Habana.

COMPILADORES: HUMBERTO BLANCO ROSALES y BETSY ANAYA CRUZ

Febrero de 2021

ISBN: 978-9945-9278-3-2

Complete Text of Book

INDICE:

A modo de introducción: otra pelea cubana contra los demonios/ Humberto Blanco Rosales y Mayra Tejuca Martínez

Reflexiones en torno a la nueva estrategia para el desarrollo económico y social de Cuba/ Betsy Anaya Cruz

Implementación de la nueva estrategia económica y social: una mirada desde la gestión/ Humberto Blanco Rosales

IED en tiempos de COVID-19: ¿qué podemos esperar?/ Juan Triana Cordoví

Cuba: apuntes sobre comercio exterior y COVID-19/ Ricardo Torres Pérez

Alimentación en Cuba: impactos de la COVID-19/ Anicia García Álvarez

El turismo mundial y en Cuba pospandemia/ Miguel Alejandro Figueras

Teletrabajo en tiempos de COVID-19: oportunidades y desafíos para Cuba/ Dayma Echevarría León

Trabajo por cuenta propia. Pre y posCOVID-19/ Ileana Díaz Fernández

La banca comercial tras la COVID-19/ Francisco Fidel Borrás Atiénzar y Oscar Luis Hung Pentón

De los autores

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INVERSIÓN EN CUBA: LAS PRINCIPALES BARRERAS ESTÁN EN MANOS DEL GOBIERNO

Si de verdad el Gobierno cubano quiere promover la inversión en el país, debe terminar con la política de ‘para los extranjeros todo, para los cubanos nada’.

Emilio Morales

Diario de Cuba,  16 Mar 2021 – 12:08 CET

Articulo Original: INVERSIÓN EN CUBA

Cuando un inversionista se pregunta cuáles son las verdaderas oportunidades que existen en Cuba para llevar a cabo un proyecto de inversión, tiene que poner su mirada en las dos grandes limitantes que hoy existen en la Isla:

1. Lo poco atractivo que es el mercado nacional por las barreras que el Gobierno impone con su bloqueo interno, tanto a los cubanos residentes en la Isla como a los residentes en el exterior, lo cual incluye limitaciones de tipo legal, la falta de seguridad jurídica, la intermediación del Estado para la contratación de mano de obra, y para decidir quién, en qué y cómo invierte. Además, debe tener en cuenta otros aspectos, como por ejemplo la propia centralización de la economía, la falta de liquidez, el endeudamiento o el no cumplimiento de los pagos.

2. El embargo estadounidense y la activación del Título III de la ley Helms-Burton.

Bloqueo interno y otras limitaciones

De los puntos mencionados, el primero es el de mayor peso. Es obvio que el bloqueo interno que mantiene el Gobierno cubano sobre sus propios ciudadanos para impedirles generar riqueza es la camisa de fuerza que ha mantenido por más de 60 años las oportunidades de inversión en la Isla en el eterno limbo del “no se puede”.

El principal atractivo de cualquier país para atraer la inversión extranjera es el ambiente de libertad empresarial que pueda tener en su propio mercado, amparado por leyes que estimulen, protejan y promuevan el emprendimiento ciudadano. A esto se sumaría el tener fuerza de trabajo calificada y oportunidades de desarrollo para cualquier proyecto o negocio en el mercado interno, que permita satisfacer la demanda de productos y servicios tanto de los ciudadanos como de las empresas.

Obviamente estas condiciones no existen hoy en Cuba. No han existido por seis décadas. La élite de poder ha concentrado en manos del Estado las estructuras productivas del país, ha subordinado la economía y las instituciones a la ideología y ha sometido a la población a un régimen de control, privándola de sus derechos de libertad, opinión, libre asociación y de generación de riqueza.

Continue Reading: Inversión en Cuba

Mariel, April 2015
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ANTILLES LAUNCHES CUBAN GOLD RESOURCE DRILL OUT

Matt Birney

The West Australian, Sunday 7 February 2021

Original Article: Cuban Gold Resource Drill Out

Cubanex’s diamond rig kicks off Antilles maiden drilling program at its La Demajagua project in Cuba

Antilles Gold has launched a massive 25,000 metre drilling campaign across its La Demajagua gold and silver project in Cuba. The company is looking to delineate a resource over the deposit with the current drilling program also set to provide bulk samples for metallurgical test work as Antilles eyes a rapid move into a feasibility study for its precious metal-rich project in the Caribbean.

Drilling at La Demajagua is being undertaken by local contractor, Cubanex who is co-owned by Canadian drilling company Heath and Sherwood International. Antilles has commenced infill and extensional drilling across the Delita deposit in order to confirm the results of previous exploration. The company has designed more than 200 development drill holes over the ore system, with the deepest holes set to test the deposit at depths of more than 220m below surface.

Cubanex’ first rig is now on site and producing drill core, with the expectation it will be joined by a second rig in February 2021. The option is also in place for a third rig should Antilles choose to up the ante on the development program. All diamond core sample assaying and metallurgical test-work will be undertaken by SGS laboratories in Canada, with the company expected to table its maiden resource for the project in the first half of this year and complete its pre-feasibility soon after.

Antilles’ La Demajagua project lies on the western side of the Isla de Juventud, or Isle of Youth, around 170km to the south of Havana, across the Gulf of Batabano in Cuba. The island covers an area of more than 2,200 square kilometres and is the seventh-largest island in the West Indies.

The company began discussions to acquire La Demajagua in late 2018 and finally closed the deal in August 2020, having formed a joint venture vehicle with the state-owned GeoMinera to explore and develop the slumbering precious metals deposit. The joint venture company, Minera La Victoria, will be 49 per cent owned by Antilles once the company has completed its initial earn-in by spending US$13 million on exploration and development across the project. The company says it expects to complete this initial phase of expenditure in the first three-years of its development program in Cuba.

Antilles’ enticing precious metals project is located 27km south-west of the regional centre of Nueva Gerona, with the centrepiece of the acquisition being the dormant Delita gold and silver mine. Delita has a history of production dating back to the 1920s however it has been mined only on a modest scale, with artisanal operations and smaller mining groups having extracted high-grade gold ores via underground operations between 1947 and 1989.

Following the mine’s closure in the late 1980s, Delita has been subject to several exploration campaigns by Canadian explorers which has generated a database of more than 50,000m of drilling. Expert mining group, Cube Consulting in Perth, Western Australia, has reviewed the existing database of drilling and used it to assist in the design of the current drilling program, with modelling outlining a massive “exploration target” of between 16 and 20 million tonnes of ore at a healthy grade of 2.3 to 2.7 grams per tonne gold.

Interestingly, Cube’s modelling also shows the deposit to contain between 17 and 23 g/t of silver and with the lustrous metal currently gaining popularity in the global market and trading at close to US$27 an ounce, it provides the developing resource with a welcome credit. Utilising Cube’s projections, the Delita resource is expected to host more than 1.2 million ounces of gold and 8.7 million ounces of silver.

However, Antilles has also delved further into the historical body of work over Delita, utilising feasibility studies completed back in the 1990s to formulate a preliminary economic assessment. The development proposal envisages an 800,000 tonne per year open pit mining operation aimed at producing over 60,000 tonnes of high-grade gold-silver sulphide concentrate per annum, with an initial six-year mine life.

Based upon previous metallurgical work undertaken by internationally recognised SGS-Lakefield in Canada, the sulphide concentrate would grade at an eye-catching 47 g/t gold and 380 g/t silver, delivering around 90,500 ounces of gold and 730,000 ounces of silver into Antilles’ coffers per annum.

With drilling now underway at La Demajagua and a rapid move to feasibility already on the horizon for Antilles, the company has successfully shifted its focus into Cuba and looks set to put its hard-won expertise in the mining and processing of sulphide ores in the America’s to good use in the development of the gold and silver-rich Delita deposit south of Havana.

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TRUMP’S CUBA GAMBIT PUSHES CANADIAN MINER SHERRITT TO THE BRINK

Original article: Sherritt could get caught in the crossfire between U.S. and Cuba

Paula Sambo and Danielle Bochove,

Bloomberg News, June 5, 2020

 

Sherritt International Corporation’s nickel mine in Cuba.

Sherritt International Corp. (S.TO), whose executives were once known as Fidel Castro’s favorite capitalists, is paying the price for its close ties to the struggling Caribbean nation.

The Canadian miner, which gets all its revenue from assets in Cuba, is being hit on multiple fronts by Donald Trump’s isolationism, plunging nickel prices and cost overruns. With the stock at 21 cents and its bonds trading at distressed levels, investors are starting to question the company’s viability.

“It all depends how the world unfolds in terms of commodity prices and the U.S.-Cuban relationship,” Chief Executive Officer David Pathe said in an interview this week. “There’s only so much that we can do right now and that’s focusing on the things that we can control.”

The Toronto-based miner is a shadow of what it once was. Long-known as a proxy for Cuba since former CEO Ian Delaney first engaged with Castro in the 1990s to develop the island’s nickel, oil and gas assets, Sherritt prospered as U.S. relations thawed over the past two decades and commodity prices soared.

Revenue jumped to almost $2 billion a decade ago, while the stock traded as high as $18 in 2007. Since then, the stock has dropped 99 per cent amid heightened country risk, a failed project in Madagascar, cost overruns and the collapse of the commodity super-cycle. The company’s bonds are trading at about 30 Canadian cents, according to multiple portfolio managers, implying low recovery in case of a default or debt overhaul.

“We have seen some bonds selling in the context of more aggressive U.S. policy towards Cuba, which has caused holders that have significant interests or operations in the U.S. to get out,” Pathe said. “That is what it is. From our perspective, we are focused on running our business as best we can.”

Sherritt’s debt costs are rising even as the company’s ability to generate cash flow to service that debt falls. Concerns about global growth have knocked the price of nickel down 24 per cent over the last year, reducing the amount of cash Sherritt receives from markets outside Cuba. Meanwhile, a tightening of U.S. sanctions against Cuba this year has resulted in the island nation being unable to pay Sherritt for the energy it produces in foreign currency and has caused bondholders to sell the company’s debt.

“We have deliberately avoided having any presence in the U.S. since Helms-Burton came in 23 years ago,” said Pathe, who is barred from entering the country under a section of the act. Despite this, the company is being caught in the cross-fire as Trump punishes Cuba for its support of Venezuela, and takes aim at trading partners around the world.

Debt Reduction

Having managed to knock around $2 billion off its debt in recent years, the 92-year-old company’s top priority is to continue to see that balance come down and reduce interest expenses, according to its CEO. The next big bond maturity is $170 million in notes in 2021 and the company has a $70 million revolving facility due next year that it anticipates renewing ahead of the maturity, Pathe said.

As it hangs on by its fingernails, some debt investors are seeing a silver lining ahead.

“They are trading below their working capital; the optionality is huge even excluding long-term assets like the refinery” said Paul Tepsich, founder and portfolio manager at High Rock Capital Management Inc. in Toronto, referring to the refinery in Alberta. “I think they get a deal signed with Cuba imminently and that produces strong cash flow on a monthly basis to Sherritt.”

For Tepsich, who owns Sherritt debt, the company has room to buy back bonds. The Moa nickel-and-cobalt mine joint venture should also provide both cash flow and dividends in hard currency, he said. The company produces electricity, oil and gas in Cuba and has a 50 per cent stake in the Moa mine, although it finishes the ore in Canada.

Coal Sale

For more than a decade, Sherritt has fought to reduce its debt, selling all of its coal assets in 2013 as commodity prices languished. A spike in cobalt prices in 2017 helped the company post its first annual profit since 2012 but it fell back into the red last year. Total debt stands at $706 million, less than a third of what it was less than two years ago.

Sherritt’s debt almost quadrupled between 2007 and 2008 as the company developed the massive Ambatovy nickel and cobalt project in Madagascar with Sumitomo Corp. and Korea Resources Corp. From the start, the project was plagued with delays and cost overruns, not to mention a political coup that resulted in the suspension of mining licenses.

Meanwhile, the company’s footprint in Cuba has created constant challenges. In 1996, Sherritt executives and shareholders were the first to be banned from the U.S. under the Helms-Burton law.  Twelve years later, Fidel Castro’s resignation sparked hope for more foreign investment in Cuba but progress, including subsequent American liberalization under President Barack Obama, has recently been overshadowed by a tightening of policy under Trump. The pressure has worsened Cuba’s access to foreign currency; it owed Sherritt almost US$172 million at the end of the first quarter, although Sherritt said a plan is in place to manage payments.

Last April, meanwhile, the White House said it would activate a provision of Helms-Burton that would let Americans sue for land confiscated in the 1959 revolution.  That’s a big deal for Sherritt: The US$88.3 million claim against its nickel mine is now greater than the company’s market capitalization.

 

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FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN CUBA MIGHT BE AT RISK IF U.S. ALLOWS LAWSUITS OVER CONFISCATED PROPERTY

BY MIMI WHITEFIELD

Miami Herald, FEBRUARY 20, 2019 12:00 AM

Original Article: Confiscated Property

Cuba’s efforts to attract foreign investment to boost its ailing economy were limping along even before the Trump administration raised the possibility that it might allow lawsuits in U.S. courts against foreign companies that do business on the island using properties confiscated from Americans or Cubans who later became U.S. nationals.

Now with the clock ticking on a U.S. decision on whether to allow U.S. nationals to sue for monetary damages, Cuba’s investment climate might be about to take another hit.

“I think this would be another layer of concern for potential foreign investors and could chill investment in Cuba considerably,” said Jason Poblete, a Washington area attorney who specializes in federal regulatory matters. “It would be an added complication.”

Every U.S. president since 1996 has routinely suspended Title III — the lawsuit provision — of the Helms-Burton Act fearing fallout from important U.S. allies such as the EU countries, Canada and Mexico whose investors in Cuba could be targeted. Like clockwork, presidents have waived the lawsuit provision every six months for more than two decades. The Trump administration has suspended it three times already.

But in January Secretary of State Mike Pompeo informed Congress that this time, beginning on Feb. 1, there would be only a 45-day suspension of Title III. “This extension will permit us to conduct a careful review of the right to bring action under Title III in light of the national interests of the United States and efforts to expedite a transition to democracy in Cuba,” the State Department said.
The review is being conducted at a time when U.S.-Cuba relations are increasingly frayed and will take into consideration “factors such as the Cuban regime’s brutal oppression of human rights and fundamental freedoms and its indefensible support for increasingly authoritarian and corrupt regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua,” the State Department said.

Analysts say that indicates that the administration wants to make the case that this goes beyond property rights and foreign investment in Cuba and also has a national security dimension.

The decision could come soon, on or around March 2, because the secretary of state must give Congress at least 15 days notice before a suspension of Title III is to begin.

In a process that ended decades ago, the United States certified 5,913 claims for Cuban properties that belonged to U.S. citizens and were expropriated shortly after the 1959 revolution. Those claims plus interest are valued at about $8 billion in today’s dollars.

But under Helms-Burton, also known as the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, Cubans who were not U.S. citizens at the time their properties were seized also would be able to file suit if a foreign investor in Cuba is “trafficking” in their former properties.

That would include investors who have joint ventures or partnerships with Cuban entities and companies that use or benefit from disputed properties. It also could target foreign companies that have management contracts for properties with underlying claims.

Excluded from the Title III definition of trafficking are any transactions and uses of confiscated property “incident to lawful travel to Cuba” as well as any property that is used for the delivery of international telecommunications to Cuba.

Those who lost their homes and smaller property owners also would be precluded from filing lawsuits if the value of their confiscated property didn’t exceed $50,000 at the time it was taken.

“It would not be easy to make a Title III claim. It requires time, money and emotional capital,” said Poblete. “This is complex litigation.”

Helms-Burton, which was signed into law in 1996 in the heat of Cuba’s shoot-down of two civilian planes piloted by Cuban Americans, notes that the Cuban government “is offering foreign investors the opportunity to purchase an equity interest in, manage or enter into joint ventures using property and assets, some of which were confiscated from United States nationals” in an effort to gain “badly needed financial benefit.”
Cuba, once wary of foreign investors, has said it needs to attract $2.5 billion annually in foreign investment to meet its development targets, but so far it has fallen short of that goal. From October 2017 to October 2018, for example, Cuba approved 40 new projects, representing a potential investment of $1.5 billion.

For 2018-2019, Cuba has announced it is opening up 525 projects, everything from opportunities in the tourism sector to building pharmaceutical, LED lighting and food processing plants, to potential foreign investors. This $11.6 billion portfolio of investment opportunities is the largest Cuba has ever released, beating the previous wish list for $10.7 billion worth of investment in 465 projects.

After the Cuban economy grew by just over 1 percent in 2018, Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel said that “Cuba’s fundamental battle” is economic and that one of Cuba’s urgent needs is attracting more foreign direct investment.

But not everyone is convinced that Cuba is doing enough if it truly wants to attract foreign investors.

“The Cubans might say that foreign investment is a central part of their economic strategy but they haven’t created a climate that is attractive for foreign investment,” said Richard Feinberg, a professor at the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy and a Brookings Institution fellow.

“The domestic market is stagnant if not shrinking. For companies interested in repatriating profits? There are already delays in Cuba repatriating profits,” he said.

Potential investors also have complained of a lengthy, cumbersome process for evaluating investment proposals, although Cuba said it is streamlining the approval process. It also has opened a Special Economic Development Zone in Mariel that offers special tax and customs breaks and allows up to 100 percent foreign ownership.

 

“The biggest disappointment with Díaz-Canel so far is that the economy is in serious straits. The Cuban people would like to see light at the end of the tunnel,” Feinberg said.

But in the event that Title III lawsuits are allowed to go forward, he said, “the business climate in Cuba would go from a temperature of 0 to minus 5 degrees. That may be a bit dramatic but already there’s just a trickle of foreign investment coming in.”

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said earlier this week that Cuba is ready if the United States applies Title III: “We have a program, with a predictable plan for the economy until 2030. The Cuban economy has a strong international anchor.”

Even if the U.S. government decides after its review to continue the suspension of Title III, “the threat itself has a chilling effect,” Feinberg said. “For companies contemplating a new investment in Cuba, they must do their due diligence and make sure there is not an underlying claim.”
“This isn’t really about property,” said Phil Peters, president of the Cuban Research Center. “It’s an attempt to squeeze the Cuban economy to hopefully push Cuba over the brink” and bring political change.

If Title III is activated, a person or entity trafficking in confiscated property would get a three-month warning and then would be liable for monetary damages up to three times the value of the property plus interest as well as court costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees.

European hoteliers and Canadian mining operations are expected to be among the biggest targets if Title III goes forward. Investors from as many as 20 countries could be the targets of Title III lawsuits, said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

But U.S. trading partners are expected to push back against the extraterritorial nature of Title III.  “The EU, Canada, the UK, and Mexico have what are called blocking regulations on their books to countermand an action under Title III,” said Pedro Freyre, a Miami lawyer who represents cruise lines and other U.S. companies doing business in Cuba.

Such blocking regulations, he said, wouldn’t allow defendants to participate in discovery, would block compliance with any U.S. court orders and wouldn’t allow for the enforcement of a judgment. “They generally allow for claw-back as well, which means the defendant would be allowed to sue the claimant for damages and attorney’s fees,” Freyre said.
The EU also could revive a World Trade Organization complaint it filed when Helms-Burton first became law but which it later withdrew.

“The foreign companies will argue that the United States doesn’t have jurisdiction,” said Robert Muse, a Washington attorney who specializes in U.S.-Cuba relations. “This would be a hard-fought issue.”

Sherritt International

 Nickel Mine and Concentrator, Moa, Cuba; Jointly Owned by Sherritt International and Cuba. A “Helm’s-Burton” Property

 

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ORDER FROM CHAOS: WHAT WILL BE RAUL CASTRO’S LEGACY?

Richard E. Feinberg, Nonresident Senior Fellow – Foreign PolicyLatin America Initiative

Brookings, December 4, 2017

Original Article: Order from Chaos
In many ways, Raúl Castro’s 10-year presidential rule, ending in February 2018, has been utterly disappointing. Cuba’s economy is stagnant and economic reform has stalled. Political power remains highly centralized and secluded. The island’s educated youth are fleeing in droves for better opportunities abroad. And the Trump administration is renewing U.S. hostility.

Nevertheless, during his decade in power Raúl Castro oversaw historic shifts in Cuban foreign and domestic policies. Raúl initiated some policy innovations, deepened and consolidated others, and merely watched while forces beyond his control drove other changes. Regardless, these changes have paved the way for the successor generation of leaders—if they dare—to push Cuba forward into the 21st century.

MORE FRIENDS

Fidel’s younger brother, now 86, can be especially pleased with his achievements in foreign affairs. Cuba had been a colony of Spain, a dominion of U.S. capital, a cog within the Soviet-dominated Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) system. Now, for the first time in its 500-year history, Cuba has escaped the grip of a single world power.

Today, Cuban traders circumnavigate the globe, engaging both state-directed and free-market economies. The top trading 10 partners in goods in 2016 were (in rank order): China, Venezuela, Spain, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, Argentina, Germany, and Vietnam. The next tier of merchandise trading partners (between $275 million and $100 million) includes the United States, France, Algeria, the Netherlands, Russia, and Trinidad and Tobago. No single country accounts for more than 20 percent of total merchandise trade.

This trade diversification began in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Raúl’s economic team extended and consolidated it. Under Raúl, Cuba also expanded the number of countries that purchase its main service export—the labor of educated professionals, especially in the medical field. While Fidel initiated large-scale service exports to Venezuela, Raúl followed suit with Brazil and dozens of other developing countries.

In the last 10 years, Cuba has also diversified the sources of foreign investment. For example, in the economy’s bright spot, international tourism, investors hail from Spain, France, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, China, and Malaysia, among other locations.

A small island economy cannot hope to be fully autonomous; it must adapt to global constraints. But by diversifying its economic partners, Cuba has minimized its vulnerability to external dictates, and maximized its own margin for maneuver. This diversification of economic partnerships has paid handsome diplomatic dividends. Cuba has become an accepted participant in various Latin American forums and diplomatic initiatives; overcame its exclusion from the Summit of the Americas leaders’ meetings; gained membership in the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI); and gained access to resources at the multilateral Andean Development Corporation (CAF). President Donald Trump is alone in his efforts to damage the Cuban economy through comprehensive economic sanctions.

BREAKING IDEOLOGICAL BARRIERS

The slow, halting pace of economic reform has discouraged many Cubans, especially recent university graduates. Conservative forces resisting change remain strong within the Cuban Communist Party. Nevertheless, Raúl leaves a legacy that could greatly facilitate the work of reformers in the future. (I will further evaluate the economic reforms and pathways forward in a February 2018 Brookings policy brief.)

Raúl’s legacy lies not in standard measures of economic performance, such as per capita GDP growth, labor productivity, or investment rates, where results have varied from disappointing to disastrous. Rather, Raúl’s legacy in economic policy lies in breaking once forbidding ideological barriers. True, Raúl’s public statements often have been contradictory and shifting, as he apparently sought to balance conflicting tendencies within the Cuban Communist Party. But in key areas, Raúl demolished or at least cracked these obstacles to change: rejection of globalization (a favorite Fidel bugaboo), fear of foreign investment, and hostility to private business and markets. He also transformed relations with the United States.

In daily life, Cubans have left behind the comfort of social uniformity and relative economic equality for the more tumultuous worlds of greater social heterogeneity and income inequalities.

Raúl is no cheerleader for globalization. But he set aside his brother’s heated denunciations of multinational corporations and “exploitative” markets. Instead, he went about the practical business of building economic relations with a multitude of governments and foreign corporations. Without much pomp and circumstance (although there was the occasional ribbon-cutting), Raúl advanced the process of normalizing Cuba’s integration into global markets.

Raúl’s decision to normalize diplomatic relations with “the historic enemy,” the United States, dramatically revised his regime’s foreign policy doctrine. The hegemon just across the Florida Straits was no longer an imminent, existential threat, readily justifying economic deprivations and tight political restrictions. Notwithstanding the altered attitude in Washington today, so far a number of the concrete gains from the Obama era détente remain in place, notably the facilitation of travel (commercial airline flights and cruise ships) and the generous flows of remittances to many Cuban families, whether for household consumption or business start-ups.

Of the reforms most directly attributable to Raúl, the suppression of the special (and expensive) permit to travel abroad was among the most important to many Cubans. As a result, most Cubans can freely leave the island (provided they can acquire an entry visa elsewhere), to be enriched by their contact with foreign lands and ideas. Greater access to mobile technology and rapidly expanding social media, permission to sell homes and cars, and more freedom to stay in once-forbidden tourist hotels have also improved life for many Cubans during his tenure.

De facto, by building commercial partnerships worldwide, and by accepting the freedom to travel, Cuba has now embraced core components of globalization.

OPENING TO FOREIGN INVESTMENT

To stave off complete economic collapse in the early 1990s, Fidel had invited in limited foreign investment. El Comandante en Jefe made these concessions holding his sensitive ideological nose and again closed Cuba’s borders once he felt politically secure. In sharp contrast, Raúl has publicly chastised his ministers for not accelerating foreign capital inflows (although he hesitated to fire them).

Periodically, the government releases a “Portfolio of Opportunities for Foreign Investment.” Each edition is fatter and glossier; the 300-page 2017-2018 version features 456 projects with a cumulative price tag of $11 billion. Yes, most projects have remained on paper, victims of bureaucratic foot-dragging and red tape; but these documents are products of an inter-agency process whereby many ministries and state enterprises join in a collective waving of hands to the international commercial community.

In a 2011 official document outlining proposed reforms, foreign investment was derided as “complementary,” a secondary afterthought. In contrast, when addressing Havana’s annual international trade fair in 2017, Raúl’s minister for foreign trade and investment sang a very different tune: “Today foreign investment ceases to be a complement and has become an essential issue for the country.”

Mariel, the new economic development zone facing the Straits of Florida, has gotten off to a slow start, having approved over three years only 26 projects worth about $1 billion. However, 15 of these projects have broken through another ideological barrier: allowing 100 percent foreign ownership.

LEGITIMIZING PRIVATE PROPERTY

Fidel disliked and distrusted private property. In 1968, for example, he nationalized remaining mom-and-pop businesses. In contrast, over the last decade the government has issued hundreds of thousands of licenses to small-scale private businesses. Raúl has also encouraged some 200,000 Cuban families to farm as homesteaders (although not all survived). In addition to these authorized private businesses, many Cubans augment their income in more-or-less tolerated gray-market activities. Altogether, as much as 40 percent of the Cuban workforce have at least one foot in the private sector.

Recently, Raúl criticized private business for illicit activities, and the government halted the granting of new business licenses. Nevertheless, these concessions to anxious Communist Party stalwarts appear to be a temporary pause. The ideological foundations, and public constituency, for the acceptance and eventual expansion of a market-driven private sector have most likely been set too deep for a full-blown counter-revolution to succeed.

SOCIAL RELAXATION

This increase in economic pluralism has unleashed public debates on economic policy. Criticism of government performance is widely voiced with less fear, even if journalists and academics are still careful not to directly confront senior authority.

Another major shift that accelerated during the last decade: the evolution of Cuban society from socialist uniformity toward a more heterogeneous mix of property relations, income levels, and social styles. While legal statutes remain to be written, property can now be private (often in partnership with diaspora capital), cooperative (in numerous variations) and foreign-owned, as well as state controlled.

Income inequalities have become more visible, even if less jarring than in other Latin American and Caribbean nations. Many Cubans still honor social solidarity. But the transition toward a more normal, relaxed, and individualistic society is unmistakable. On Havana’s streets, Cuban youth—increasingly exposed to international tourists, travel opportunities and the worldwide web—sport the variety of hairstyles, tattoos, music, and other signatures of global youth.

These ideological adaptations do not guarantee speedy policy changes, much less their faithful implementation. The Cuban government is grappling with a severe foreign exchange crisis, and the sudden, unanticipated chill in bilateral relations imposed by the United States. All the more reasons for the next generation of Cuban leaders to build upon the diversity of international economic associations and the new ideological currents unleashed during the reign of the second and last Castro brother—and to launch their island state into deeper phases of global integration and economic transformation.

Richard Feinberg

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NESTLE, CUBA LAY FIRST STONE FOR $55 MILLION COFFEE AND BISCUIT FACTORY

Reuters, November 28, 2017.

Original Article: Cuba Nestle

By Sarah Marsh

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba and Swiss firm Nestle on Tuesday laid the first stone of a $55 million coffee and biscuits factory joint venture in the Mariel special development zone, the latest major foreign investment in the Communist-run island.

Nescor is Cuba’s third joint venture with Nestle and reflects President Raul Castro’s drive to attract international capital to help update the Soviet-style command economy and stimulate growth.

Cuba created the zone around the Mariel port just west of Havana four years ago, offering companies significant tax and customs breaks. Its aim to replace imports with Made in Cuba goods has become all the more pressing because aid from socialist ally Venezuela is falling, resulting in a cash crunch.

Nestle Vice President Laurent Freixe said in an interview after the symbolic stone-laying ceremony that negotiations with Cuban partner Coralsa and Mariel authorities had taken just 18 months, a “record speed”.

The factory would be operating at the end of 2019 manufacturing coffee products, said Freixe, head of Nestle’s Americas division. Biscuits and other culinary products would come later. The company exports goods to Cuba and the other two joint ventures are one producing ice cream and the other bottled water and other beverages.Nescor goods would be destined both for the Cuban market and tourists visiting Cuba, while it could eventually also export Cuban coffee, Freixe said.

Nestle last year already exported Cuban coffee as a limited “Cafecito de Cuba” edition of Nespresso single-use brewer pods, including to the United States.

“It sold at an impressive speed,” said Freixe. “Within a few days that line was sold out, which shows the potential.”

Before being able to export Cuban coffee, Nestle would first need to help Cuba increase its harvest, Freixe said, which has steadily declined since the 1959 revolution.

The new factory could double Nestle’s turnover in the country over the medium term from $135 million currently, he said.

So far, Cuba has approved 31 projects for the Mariel zone including nine with multinationals, Director Ana Teresa Igarza said at the ceremony. There was no longer the same flurry of business interest in the zone as when it was created but the interest that remained was more serious, she said. Mariel was on the list of Cuban entities that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump banned U.S. firms from doing business with.Just one U.S. company, Rimco, the Puerto Rican dealer for heavy machine maker Caterpillar , has signed a deal with Mariel to open up shop there, getting approval just on time before the new U.S. regulations were issued earlier this month.Igarza declined comment on whether Mariel continued to negotiate with other U.S. companies but said it would be open to doing so.

Mariel, April 2015. (Photo by Arch Ritter)

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CUBA: CARTERA DE OPORTUNIDADES DE INVERSION EXTRANJERA, 2017-2018

MINCEX, November 2017

Original Document: MINCEX:  CARTERA DE OPORTUNIDADES DE INVERSION EXTRANJERA 2017-2018

Great opportunities for foreign investors in Cuba!

After nationalizing all foreign investment as well as domestic private enterprise – right down to the street vendors and shoe shine boys in the 1960 to 1968 period –  Cuba is now  courting foreign investors.

Here is the current document from MINCEX listing the possiblde investment opportunities for foreign enterprises,. It was sent courtesy of Jose Luis Rodriguez, (former Minister of Economics and Planning, former Director and currently with the CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS SOBRE LA ECONOMIA MUNDIA).

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Slim pickings. CLUELESS ON CUBA’S ECONOMY

HAVANA. The communist regime can no longer rely on the generosity of its allies. It has no idea what to do

The Economist.  Print edition | The Americas. Sep 30th 2017

GABRIEL and Leo have little in common. Gabriel makes 576 Cuban pesos ($23) a month as a maintenance man in a hospital. Leo runs a private company with revenues of $20,000 a month and 11 full-time employees. But both have cause for complaint. For Gabriel it is the meagre subsistence that his salary affords. In a dimly lit minimá (mini-mall) in Havana he shows what a ration book entitles one person to buy per month: it includes a small bag of coffee, a half-bottle of cooking oil and five pounds of rice. The provisions cost next to nothing (rice is one cent per pound) but are not enough. Cubans have to buy extra in the “free market”, where rice costs 20 times as much.

Leo (not his real name) has different gripes. Cuba does not manufacture the inputs he needs or permit enterprises like his to import them. He travels abroad two or three times a month to get them anyway. It takes six to eight hours to pack his suitcases in such a way that customs officials don’t spot the clandestine goods. “You feel like you’re moving cocaine,” he says.

Making things easier for entrepreneurs like Leo would ultimately help people like Gabriel by encouraging the creation of better jobs, but Cuba’s socialist government does not see it that way. In August it announced that it will stop issuing new licences in two dozen of the 201 trades in which private enterprise is permitted. The frozen professions include running restaurants, renting out rooms to tourists, repairing electronic devices and teaching music.

This does not end Cuba’s experiment with capitalism. Most of the 600,000 cuentapropistas (self-employed workers), including restaurateurs, hoteliers and so on, will be able to carry on as before. But the government mistrusts them. Their prosperity provokes envy among poorer Cubans. Their independent-mindedness could one day become dissent. Raúl Castro, the country’s president, recently railed against “illegalities and other irregularities”, including tax evasion, committed by cuentapropistas. He did not admit that kooky government restrictions make them inevitable. The government “fights wealth, not poverty”, laments one entrepreneur.

A Santeria Message

Trump’s mouth, Irma’s eye

The clampdown on capitalism comes at a fraught time for Cuba. Mr Castro is due to step down as president in February. That will end nearly 60 years of autocratic rule by him and his elder brother, Fidel, who led Cuba’s revolution in 1959. The next president will probably have no memory of that event. Relations with the United States, which under Barack Obama eased its economic embargo and restored diplomatic relations, have taken a nasty turn. President Donald Trump plans to make it more difficult for Americans to visit the island. Reports of mysterious “sonic attacks” on American diplomats in Havana have further raised tensions.

Hurricane Irma, which struck in early September, killed at least ten people, laid waste to some of Cuba’s most popular beach resorts and briefly knocked out the country’s entire power system. With a budget deficit expected to reach 12% of GDP this year, the government has little money to spend on reconstruction.

These are blows to an economy that was already in terrible shape. Cuba’s favourite economic stratagem—extracting subsidies from left-wing allies—has had its day. Venezuela, which replaced the Soviet Union as its patron, is in even worse shape than Cuba. Their barter trade—Venezuelan oil in exchange for the services of Cuban doctors and other professionals—is shrinking. Trade between the two countries has dropped from $8.5bn in 2012 to $2.2bn last year. Cuba has had to buy more fuel at full price on the international market. Despite a boom in tourism, its revenues from services, including medical ones, have been declining since 2013.

Bound by a socialist straitjacket, Cuba produces little else that other countries or its own people want to buy. Farming, for example, is constrained by the absence of markets for land, machinery and other inputs, by government-set prices, which are often below the market price, and by bad transport. Cuba imports 80% of its food.

Paying for it is becoming harder. In July the economy minister, Ricardo Cabrisas, told the national assembly that the financial squeeze would reduce imports by $1.5bn in 2017. What appears in shops often depends on which of Cuba’s suppliers are willing to wait for payment. GDP shrank by 0.9% in real terms in 2016. Irma and the drop in imports condemn the economy to another bad year in 2017.

The government does not know what to do. One answer is to encourage foreign investment, but the government insists on pulling investors into a goo of bureaucracy. Multiple ministries must sign off on every transaction; officials decide such matters as how many litres of diesel will be needed for delivery trucks; investors cannot freely send profits home. Between March 2014 and November 2016 Cuba attracted $1.3bn of foreign investment, less than a quarter of its target.

Faced with a stalled economy and the threat of shortages, the government is trying harder to woo investors. It has agreed to let food companies, for example, repatriate some of their profits. But anything more daring seems a distant prospect. Cuentapropistaslike Leo are waiting impatiently for a planned law on small- and medium-sized enterprises. That would allow them to incorporate and do other sorts of things that normal companies do. It will not be passed anytime soon, says Omar Everleny, a Cuban economist.

An even bigger step would be a reform of Cuba’s dual-currency system, which makes state-owned firms uncompetitive, keeps salaries in the state sector at miserable levels and distorts prices throughout the economy. Cuban pesos circulate alongside “convertible pesos” (CUC), which are worth about a dollar. Although for individuals (including tourists) the exchange rate between Cuban pesos and CUC is 24 to one, for state-owned enterprises and other public bodies it is one to one. For those entities, which account for the bulk of the economy, the Cuban peso is thus grossly overvalued. This delivers a massive subsidy to importers and punishes exporters.

A devaluation of the Cuban peso for state firms is necessary for the economy to function properly. But it would bankrupt many, throw people out of work and spark inflation. Countries attempting such a devaluation usually look for outside help. But, because of American opposition, Cuba cannot join the IMF or World Bank, among the main sources of aid. Fixing the currency system is a “precondition for further liberalisation”, says Emily Morris, an economist at University College London.

It is unlikely to happen while Cuba is in the throes of choosing a new leader. The process has sharpened struggles between reformers and conservatives within the government. Mr Trump’s belligerence has probably helped the latter. Most Cuba-watchers had identified Miguel Díaz-Canel, the first vice-president and Mr Castro’s probable successor, as a liberal by Cuban standards. But that was before a videotape of him addressing Communist Party members became public in August. In it, Mr Díaz-Canel accused the United States of plotting the “political and economic conquest” of Cuba and lashed out at media critical of the regime. Perhaps he was just pandering to conservatives to improve his chances to succeed Mr Castro. If those are his true opinions, that is bad news for Leo and Gabriel.

State Food Distribution Center:  the rationing system. (2015)

Mobile Self-employed Food Vendor.  (2015)

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New Publication: CUBA: LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE

CUBA: LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE

William LeoGrande, Guest Co-editor; Arien Mack, Journal Editor

TABLE OF CONTENTS

William M. Leogrande, Introduction: Cuba Looks to the Future                235

 

PART I: UPDATING THE ECONOMY

Ricardo Torres Pérez, Updating the Cuban Economy: The First 10 Years                                                                                                                            255

Archibald R.M. Ritter,   Private and Cooperative Enterprise in Cuba’s Economic Future                                                                                                                           277

Richard E. Feinberg,  Bienvenida—Maybe: Cuba’s Gradual Opening to World Markets                                                                                                                          305

Katrin Hansing,  Race and Inequality in the New Cuba: Reasons, Dynamics, and Manifestations                                                                                                               331

 

PART II: FACING POLITICAL CHALLENGES

William M. Leogrande,  Updating Cuban Socialism: The Politics of Economic Renovation                                                                                                                     353

Margaret E. Crahan, Cuba: Religion and Civil Society                                          383

Rafael Hernández, Intellectuals, Civil Society, and Political Power in Cuban Socialism  407

Ted A. Henken, Cuba’s Digital Millennials: Independent Digital Media and Civil Society on the Island of the Disconnected                                                                                     429

 

PART III: ENGAGING THE WORLD

 

Philip Brenner And Teresa Garcia Castro,  A Long Legacy of Distrust and the Future of Cuban-US Relations                                                                                                    459

Carlos Oliva Campos And Gary Prevost,  Cuba’s Relations with Latin America   487

Mervyn J. Bain, Havana, Moscow, and Beijing: Looking to the Future in the Shadow of the Past                                                                                                                                          507

 

 

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