Tag Archives: Foreign Investment

U.S. APPROVES FIRST FACTORY IN CUBA SINCE 1959

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Arch Ritter

MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN

HAVANA — The Associated Press

Original Article: U.S. Tractor Factory in Cuba

Globe and Mail, Toronto. Published Monday, Feb. 15, 2016 5:23PM EST

The Obama administration has approved the first U.S. factory in Cuba in more than half a century, allowing a two-man company from Alabama to build a plant assembling as many as 1,000 small tractors a year for sale to private farmers in Cuba.

The U.S. Treasury Department last week notified partners Horace Clemmons and Saul Berenthal that they can legally build tractors and other heavy equipment in a special economic zone started by the Cuban government to attract foreign investment.

Cuban officials already have publicly and enthusiastically endorsed the project. The partners said they expect to be building tractors in Cuba by the first quarter of 2017.

“Everybody wants to go to Cuba to sell something and that’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re looking at the problem and how do we help Cuba solve the problems that they consider are the most important problems for them to solve,” Mr. Clemmons said. “It’s our belief that in the long run we both win if we do things that are beneficial to both countries.”

The $5-million (U.S.) to $10-million plant would be the first significant U.S. business investment on Cuban soil since Fidel Castro took power in 1959 and nationalized billions of dollars of U.S. corporate and private property. That confiscation provoked a U.S. embargo on Cuba that prohibited virtually all forms of commerce and fined non-U.S. companies millions of dollars for doing business with the island country.

Some Competition for the Oxen. (Ploughing a field at Vinales)

Letting an American tractor company operate inside a Cuban government facility would have been unimaginable before Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro declared on Dec. 17, 2014, that they would restore diplomatic relations and move to normalize trade, travel and other aspects of the long-broken bilateral relationship.

Since then, Mr. Obama has been carving exceptions into the embargo through a series of executive actions, and his administration now says they allow U.S. manufacturing at the Mariel port and special economic zone about 48 kilometres west of Havana. One exception allows U.S. companies to export products that benefit private and co-operative farmers in Cuba. Mr. Berenthal and Mr. Clemmons say they will sell only to the private sector.

The Obama administration says it is eager to make the opening with Cuba irreversible by any future administration. Since the start of the year, the United States and Cuba have made a series of announcements that appear designed partly to create a sense of unstoppable momentum in their new relationship.

Cuba announced late last month that it would more than double the number of public WiFi access spots to more than 100 across the country this year and bring broadband Internet to a small number of Cuban homes, where it is currently illegal. Mr. Obama said in 2014 that Mr. Castro had promised to increase Cubans’ access to the Internet as part of détente.

On Saturday, Cuba announced it had returned a U.S. Hellfire missile it said was mistakenly shipped to Havana from Paris in 2014. On Tuesday, Cuba’s Transport Minister and the U.S. Secretary of Transportation will sign a deal authorizing the first regularly scheduled commercial flights between the United States and Cuba since shortly after the 1959 revolution.

The Oggun tractor plant, named after a god in Cuba’s syncretic Santeria religion, will assemble commercially available components into a durable and easy-to-maintain 25-horsepower tractor selling for less than $10,000, Mr. Clemmons and Mr. Berenthal said. The men believe they can sell hundreds of the tractors a year to Cuban farmers with financing from relatives outside the country and to non-government organizations seeking to help improve Cuban agriculture, which suffers from low productivity due mostly to excessive control of both basic supplies and prices by an inefficient, centrally planned state bureaucracy.

“I have two countries that for 60 years have been in the worst of terms, anything I can do to bring to the two countries and the two people together is tremendously satisfying,” said Mr. Berenthal, a Cuban-born semi-retired software engineer who left the country at age 16.

He met Mr. Clemmons, who is from Paint Rock, Ala., when they worked at IBM in the 1970s. They left to form a successful cash-register software company that grew to earn $30-million a year before they sold it in 1995 for a sum Mr. Clemmons says was “enough that I don’t have to work.”

Between their own capital and commitments from private investors, they say they have enough cash in hand to build the Oggun factory as soon as Cuba lets them proceed.

“Everything’s locked in,” Mr. Clemmons said.

Mr. Berenthal said they are optimistic they will also be able to export Oggun tractors to other Latin American countries, which have low or no tariffs on Cuba products, making them competitive on price. The men expect a 10-per-cent to 20-per-cent profit on each tractor.

For the project’s first three years, Mr. Clemmons and Mr. Berenthal say they will export components from the United States for assembly in Cuba. They hope to eventually begin manufacturing many of the parts themselves on the island. They said they expect to start with 30 Cuban employees and, if things go as planned, grow within five years to as many as 300.

Mr. Clemmons and Mr. Berenthal will publish all the schematics of their tractors online to allow Cubans and other clients to more easily repair their equipment and come up with designs for other heavy equipment based on the same frame and motor that the company, Cleber, can then produce at its Mariel factory.

The men already have plans to produce excavators, backhoes, trench diggers and forklifts, equipment badly needed across Cuba, where virtually all the infrastructure is crumbling after years of neglect and mismanagement and a lack of cash the government blames on the embargo.

“I think it’ll have a tremendous impact on their ability not only to help their economy but to set an example across the Caribbean and Latin America,” Mr. Berenthal said.

Case – International Harvester sugar cane harvester, made in Brazil. The next step for Cuban agricultural machinery assembly?

Cuban-manufactured Sugar Cane Harvester Pausing on the Highway, November 1994. Was this the last Cuban-made cane harvester?Photo by Arch Ritter.

Posted in Blog | Tagged Agriculture, Export Processing Zone, Foreign Investment, Industry, Manufacturing Sector, Mariel, US-Cuba Normalization | Leave a comment

ALTERNATIVE INSTITUTIONAL FUTURES FOR CUBA’S MIXED ECONOMY

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Arch Ritter

Archibald Ritter

February 1, 2016

Since 2010, Cuba has been implementing a redesigned institutional structure of its economy. At this time it is unclear what Cuba’s future mixed economy will look like. However, we can be sure that it will continue to evolve in the near, medium and longer term. A variety of institutional structures are possible in the future and there are a number of types of private sector that Cuba could adopt. Indeed it seems as though Cuba were moving towards a number of possibilities simultaneously.

The objective of this note is to examine a number of key institutional alternatives and weigh the relative advantages and disadvantages for each arrangement. All alternatives include some mixture of domestic or indigenous private enterprises, cooperative and “not-for-profit” activities. foreign enterprise on a joint venture or stand-alone basis, some state enterprises (in natural monopolies for example) and a public sector. However, the emphasis on each of these components will vary depending on the policy choices of future Cuban governments.

The possible institutional structures to be examined here include:

1. Institutional status-quo as of 2016;

2. A mixed economy with intensified “cooperativization”;

3. A mixed economy, with private foreign and domestic oligopolies replacing the state oligopolies;

4. A mixed economy with an emphasis on indigenous small and medium enterprise.

Option 1. Institutional Status-Quo as of 2016

The institutional “status quo” is defined by the volumes of employment in the registered and unregistered segments of the small enterprise sector, the small farmer sector, the cooperative areas, the public sector, and the joint venture sector, plus independent arts and crafts and religious personnel. The employment numbers are mainly from the Anuario Estadístico de Cuba together with a number of guesstimates, some inspired by Richard Feinberg (2013). The guesstimate for unregistered employment in the small enterprise sector may seem exaggerated. However, a large proportion of the “cuentapropistas” utilize unregistered workers and a proportion of the underground economy does not seem to have surfaced into formally registered activities. These employment estimates by institutional area are presented in Table 1 and illustrated in Chart 1, which also serve as a “base case” for sketching the other institutional alternatives.

Table 1

The current institutional status quo has a number of advantages but also some disadvantages. On the plus side, adhering to the status quo would avoid all the uncertainties and risks of a transition. It would maintain the possibility of “macro-flexibility,” that is the ability for the central government to reallocate resources by command in a rapid and large scale fashion. However, in view of the numerous “macro errors” made possible by a centralized command economy (the 10 million ton sugar harvest of 1970, the “New Man” endeavor, shutting down half the sugar mills), “macro-flexibility” may be a disadvantage. There are major advantages for the Communist Party in maintaining the institutional status quo in the economy, namely enabling political control of the citizenry (a disadvantage from other perspectives) and continuing state control over most of the distribution of income (also a disadvantage from other perspectives). The approach also helps foster good relations with North Korea (I am running out of advantages).

There are also major disadvantages. The centralized planned economy and public enterprise system generates continuing bureaucratization of production; continuing politicization of state-sector economic management and functioning; continuing lack of an effective price mechanism in the state sector and continuing perversity and dysfunctional of the incentive structure. The result of this is damage to efficiency, productivity and innovation.

OPTION 2. Mixed Economy with Intensified “Cooperativization”

A second alternative might be to promote the authentic “cooperativization” of the economy in a major way. This would involve permitting cooperatives in all areas, including professional activities; opening up the current approval processes; encouraging grass-roots bottom-up ventures; providing import & export rights; and improving credit and wholesaling systems for coops.

This approach has a number of advantages. First, it would strengthen the incentive structure and elicit serious work effort and creativity on the part of those in the coops. This is because worker ownership and management provides powerful motivation to work hard and profit-sharing ensures an alignment of worker and owner interests. This approach would generate a more egalitarian distribution of income than privately-owned enterprises. Cooperatives may possess a greater degree of flexibility than state and even private firms because their income and profits payments to members can reflect market conditions. Perhaps most important, democracy in the work-place through effective and genuine coops is valuable in itself and constitutes an advantage over both state- and privately-owned enterprise. [Workers’ ownership and control proposed in Cuba’s cooperative legislation is ironic and perhaps impossible since Cuba’s political system is characterized by a one-party monopoly. On the other hand it may help propel political democratization.]

The “second degree cooperatives” or “cooperative coalition of cooperatives” called for in the cooperative legislation is particularly interesting as it may permit reaping organizational economies of scale (a la Starbucks, McDonalds, etc. ) for small Cuban coops in these areas.

An emphasis on cooperatives would help to maintain ownership and diffused control and profit-sharing among local citizens, thereby promoting greater equity in income distribution.

But cooperatives also face difficulties and disadvantages. First, are they really more efficient than state and private enterprises? Generally speaking, cooperatives have passed the “survival test” but have not made huge inroads against private enterprise in other countries over the years. Perhaps this is because the “transactions costs” of participatory management may be significant. Personal animosities, ideological or political differences, participatory failures and/or managerial mistakes may occur. And for larger coops, complex governance structures may impair flexibility.

Second, Cuba’s actual complex co-op approval process is problematic and creates the possibility of political controls and biases. Certification of professional cooperatives is unclear. Also, the hiring of contractual workers is problematic

The “Hire or Fire after 90 days” rule may curtail job creation;
The 10% limit on contractual labor also may curtail job creation;
Governance may be impaired if uncommitted workers have to join.

Finally, what will be the role of the Communist Party in the cooperatives? Will it keep out of cooperative management? Will Party control subvert workers’ democracy and deform incentives structures?

OPTION 3. Wide Open Foreign Investment Approach A third possibility would be to open up completely to foreign investment. This would involve a rapid sell-off of state oligopolistic enterprises to deep-pocket foreign buyers such as China, the United States (in due course), Europe, Brazil, or elsewhere. The buyers might be the Walmart’s, Lowes, Subways, or Starbucks of this world, wanting to acquire major access to the Cuban market. This is a strong possibility if existing state oligopolies (e.g., CIMEX and Gaviota) were to be privatized in big chunks. The policy requirements for this approach to occur would be rapid privatization plus indiscriminate direct foreign investment and takeovers by large foreign firms.

This approach does have some advantages.

It would generate large and immediate revenue receipts for the Cuban government;
It would lead to large and rapid transfers into Cuba of financial resources; entrepreneurship and managerial talent; physical capital (machinery and equipment and structures); most modern technology embedded in machinery and equipment; and personnel where and when necessary;
The results would be rapid productivity gains, higher-productivity work and rapid GDP gains.

However, there would also be disadvantages such as:

Profits would flow out ad infinitum;
Income concentration: profits to foreign owners (e.g. the Walton family of Arkansas who practically own Walmart) and profits to oligopolistic domestic owners;
Oligopolistic economic structures would be damaging in the long run;
There would be a strengthened probability of lucrative employment and ownership for the civilian and military “Nomenclatura”;
Blockages or inhibitions to the development of Cuban entrepreneurship;
“Walmartization” of Cuban culture; dilution of Cuban uniqueness;
Further reduction of the potential for diversified manufacturing in Cuba (e.g. due to the Walmart/China mass-purchaser/mass-supplier symbiosis);
Probably a blockage of export diversification.

OPTION 4: Pro-Indigenous Private Sector in a Mixed Economy

A fourth possibility would be for Cuba to promote its own small-, medium- and larger enterprises in an open mixed economy. This would require

An “enabling environment” for micro, small and medium enterprise with a reasonable and fair tax regimen; an end to the discrimination against domestic Cuban enterprise (See Henken and Ritter, 2015, Chapter 7);
The establishment of unified and realistic monetary and exchange rate systems;
Property law and company law.

A liberalization of micro-, small and medium enterprise would also be necessary to release the creativity, energy and intelligence of Cuban citizens. This would involve open and automatic licensing for professional enterprises; an opening up for all areas for enterprise – not only the “201”; permission for firms to expand to 50 + employees in all areas; creation of wholesale markets for inputs; open access to foreign exchange and imported inputs; full legalization of “intermediaries” ; and permission for advertising.

This approach has some major advantages:

Oligopoly power would be more curtailed compared to Option 3;

The economy would be more competitively structured with all the benefits this generates;
It would encourage a further flourishing and evolution of Cuban entrepreneurship;
It would permit the development of a diversified range of manufacturing and service activities and also a greater diversification of exports;
It would provide a reduced role for the “Nomenclatura” of military and political personnel and their families that would otherwise gain from the rapid privatization of state enterprises;
It would decentralize economic and thence political power and reduce the power for government to exert political influence through economic control;
It would generate a more equitable distribution of income among Cuban citizens and among owners than Option 3;
Profits would remain in Cuba;
There would be a stronger maintenance of Cuban culture.

There would be some disadvantages with this approach.

There would be no massive and immediate cash infusion to Government from asset sell-offs. Or is this an advantage? [more effective use of in-coming revenues]
Perhaps there would be a slower macroeconomic recuperation;
There would be slower inflows of technology, finance, managerial know-how – but more domestically controlled.

Conclusion

Most likely, Cuban policy-makers in the government of Raúl Castro, the government of his immediate successor, and future governments of a politically pluralistic character will design policies that ultimately will lead to some hybrid mixture of the above four possibilities. I of course will have little or no say in the process. However, my personal preference would be for an economy resembling the structure in the accompanying chart, with a large “indigenous” private sector, a significant cooperative sector, of course a large public sector for the provision of public goods, a small sector of government-owned enterprises, and a significant private foreign and joint venture sector. So my bottom-line recommendations for current and future governments of Cuba would be:

Utilize Cuba’s abundant resource — well-educated, innovative, strongly-motivated entrepreneurship — effectively, by further liberalizing the regulatory and fiscal regime for the indigenous micro-, small and medium enterprise sector, thereby also promoting Cuba’s indigenous economic culture;
Use Cooperatives and “Coops of Coops” where possible;
Avoid “Walmartization” & homogenization of Cuban economy and culture by utilizing an activist policy towards direct foreign investment.

Bibliography

Feinberg, Richard E., Cuba’s Economic Change in Comparative Perspective, Brookings Institution, 2013

Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas, Anuario Estadístico de Cuba, 2014

Ritter, Archibald and Ted Henken, Entrepreneurial Cuba, The Changing Policy landscape, Boulder Colorado: Lynn Rienner, 2015

Posted in Blog, Featured | Tagged Cooperatives, Cuenta-Propistas, Econmic Institutions, Economic Reforms, Foreign Investment, Private Sector, Self-Employment, Small Enterprise, State Enterprise | Leave a comment

THE LEADING CANADIAN EXPERT ON CUBA, MARK ENTWISTLE, FORMER AMBASSADOR TO CUBA, ON LATE-NIGHT CHATS WITH FIDEL, THE HARPER YEARS OF DIPLOMACY AND HOW TO DO BUSINESS IN HAVANA

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Arch Ritter

RICHARD BLACKWELL

The Globe and Mail Last updated: Friday, Jan. 29, 2016 2:52PM

Original: How to Do Business in Havana

When Mark Entwistle was Canada’s ambassador to Cuba in the mid-1990s, a knock on the door of his Havana residence might mean Fidel Castro was dropping by for a chat.

“He had a house that was maybe half a kilometre up from the official residence of the Canadian ambassador,” Mr. Entwistle said. “He used to stop by all the time. By himself. There would be a knock. It would be this big hulking figure, and he would ask if he could come in and say hi and have a gin and tonic. We’d talk in the backyard, we would talk in the living room. It was a quite remarkable thing. I kept pinching myself because … love him or hate him, he is one of the historic figures of our lifetime.”

Mr. Entwistle has parlayed his deep connections into a consultancy practice that helps Canadian and American companies prepare to do business in a Cuba increasingly open to foreign corporate involvement. His work with American firms has exploded since Dec. 17, 2014, the day U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced an unprecedented thaw in relations after more than five decades of distrust and detachment.

Mr. Entwistle is in a unique position to understand the subtleties of the change in U.S.-Cuban diplomatic relations. He spent years in Canada’s foreign service, with postings in Israel and the Soviet Union. He then served as spokesman for the department of external affairs and press secretary to prime minister Brian Mulroney, before being sent to Cuba as Canada’s ambassador from 1993 to 1997.

After 15 years running his own consulting firm, he teamed up in 2012 with former Onex Corp. executive Tony Melman, and former politician and Magna International Inc. executive Belinda Stronach, joining their merchant bank Acasta Capital. There, he runs the Cuban advisory arm – a division called Acasta Cuba Capital.

Mr. Mulroney describes Mr. Entwistle as “the leading Canadian expert on Cuba” whose combination of diplomatic and business skills gives him a unique perspective. As ambassador, he was a “sure pair of hands” with a “problem-solver bent,” the former prime minister told me in a brief phone chat. While Cuba is still somewhat archaic with a Byzantine political structure, “Mark is the kind of guy who can guide Canadian and American companies through these different layers of difficulty,” Mr. Mulroney said.

Indeed, Mr. Entwistle has a sophisticated and nuanced take on Cuba and its moves to open up relations with the United States. But I have to admit that his personal anecdotes are what grab my attention most during our three-hour lunch at Sassafraz in Toronto’s Yorkville area. I’m so captivated that by the time I finish my Arctic char and he polishes off his nine-spice roast chicken breast (him much later, as he is doing most of the talking), the restaurant – which had been packed and noisy – is completely empty.

Mr. Entwistle’s close relationship with Fidel, and the degree of access he had to the Cuban government when he was ambassador, was mainly a result of Canada’s unwavering support during the depths of the U.S. chill. “We were players in many ways,” he said. “That is not the case now. There are so many competitors, and now that the Americans have arrived it is sucking up all the oxygen.”

But during Mr. Entwistle’s time as ambassador it was not unusual to get a call in the middle of the night and be summoned to Fidel’s office. “He would ask questions … he was very interested in Canadian politics … what it was like living beside the United States.” Sometimes Fidel would come to the Canadian ambassador’s residence for formal dinners, especially if Pierre Trudeau – then long retired – was in town. Mr. Trudeau was “one of the very few people that I ever saw Fidel sit and listen to, in true listening mode, not interrupting [or] formulating what he was going to say next,” Mr. Entwistle said. “It was not a mentor role, because Fidel Castro would never have a mentor. It was as an inadvertent confident. It was personally very important to Fidel.”

As a former diplomat, Mr. Entwistle is hesitant to use harsh words, but he is unequivocal about Canada’s weak efforts to take advantage of our long-standing warm relationship with Cuba. “I think it has been squandered,” he said, although “it is not gone. It is still there. The Cubans, in a way, are waiting for us to come back.”

Aside from mass tourism, and the operations of Toronto-based mining giant Sherritt International Corp., “there is effectively no major Canadian [business] play in Cuba. Against the backdrop of history, of what we used to share together, the Cubans find it odd.”

Some, but not all of the blame, can be placed on the Stephen Harper government, which was leery of appearing to be too close to a communist regime, Mr. Entwistle said. The relationship “has never been hostile, even in the glacial period of the Harper years. It was just benign neglect. The relationship is in sort of an auto-pilot mode, with the exception of all our tourists, who drink the mojitos.”

With a new government in Ottawa, and the Americans ready to descend on Cuba, it is time for us to refresh the relationship and take advantage of an economy poised for takeoff, Mr. Entwistle said. “Canada has been gifted an asset, which is years of unbroken diplomatic relations. It is to this day recognized in Cuba. We get given space that we probably don’t deserve. We are given a hearing … But the goodwill has a half life [and] it has been ticking away for a long time.”

It may not be too late to take advantage of the relationship, but if Mr. Entwistle’s business in the United States is any indication, we need to get moving, and soon.

American business sees Cuba as a potential gold mine since the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and the lifting of some sanctions, he said. Havana is “humming and buzzing” with Americans ready to take advantage of the new relationship – but the U.S. trade embargo is still in place and it is unclear how the complex web of restrictions can be lifted without support in Congress.

Some potential U.S. investors are trying what Mr. Entwistle calls “crazy stuff” such as attempting to buy up beachfront property – even though it is owned by the state. But many others are making more cautious overtures.

The real game changer, he said, would be a further climb-down in travel restrictions, to allow general tourism from the U.S. – letting average Americans see the place for themselves. Some estimates suggest four million Americans would go in the first year after the ban is lifted – a tsunami of visitors Cuba could not handle at the moment.

Despite the U.S. business curiosity, Cubans are intent that a renewed domination of their economy by Americans will not occur, Mr. Entwistle said, and they are not prepared to revamp their political structures at the behest of the United States. Cubans are, psychologically, much more independent than they were before the revolution, he said. “They have discovered the value of their own assets, which they didn’t truly understand before.”

There will likely be some further political reforms after Raul Castro steps down as president in 2018, Mr. Entwistle said, including a move to a more representative government. But that will happen on Cuba’s own terms, and not in response to U.S. pressure. Indeed, he said, awkward U.S. efforts to use intelligence programs in Cuba to push for regime change – such as a recent attempt to get Cuban hip-hop artists to put anti-government content in their lyrics – is counterproductive.

In the meantime, Americans – or Canadians – who listen carefully to what the Cubans want in terms of economic development, and are patient in nurturing relationships on the island, could do very well there, he added.

Many Americans Mr. Entwistle takes to Cuba for the first time are “bug eyed” about what they see. “They have big saucer eyes, and they are usually quite nervous going in because they have been brought up believing it to be a prison camp,” he said. “Then they say ‘This a normal county. There are no tanks on the street.’ ”

Eventually, the American entrepreneurial instinct kicks in, Mr. Entwistle says. “The business guys’ antennas start bouncing like crazy. They say: ‘Oh my God … the opportunities here!’”

Gary McMahon (IDRC), Ambassador Mark Entwisle, Francisco Leon, UN CEPAL) and Lourdes Tabares U de La Habana). at the inauguration of the Carleton University – University of Havana Masters Program in Economics, Havana, November 1993

Posted in Blog | Tagged Business, Cuba-Canada Relations, Foreign Investment, International Relations, US-Cuba Normalization | Leave a comment

CAN CANADA FULLY LEVERAGE ITS UNIQUE TRADE RELATIONSHIP WITH CUBA?

Posted on December 29, 2015 by Arch Ritter

Canadian Sailings: December 3, 2015 @ 8:32 am

Original Source: http://www.canadiansailings.ca/?p=10739

By Alan M. Field

Starved for new markets to conquer, American exporters and investors are avidly awaiting the imminent end of the fifty-five year-old U.S. trade embargo of Cuba. Given the current abundance of Cuba-focused business conferences, seminars and traveling delegations to the island-nation, Canadians might well be wondering whether the mania for all things Cuban in the U.S. will also provide a golden opportunity for Canadians to leverage their unique ties with Cuba. Or will it, on the contrary, signal the end to that special relationship at precisely the time when the rest of the world has discovered Cuba?

Trade relations between Canada and Cuba originated during the era when vessels from the Atlantic provinces of Canada traded codfish and beer in Cuba for that country’s rum and sugar. “Canada has been a major trading partner with Cuba dating back to the 1800s,” notes Arch Ritter, an economist at Carleton University, who has written extensively about Cuba’s economic history. “Our ties have been longstanding, and we have never cut trade ties with Cuba.”

Over the past few decades, trade ties between the two countries have grown significantly, but remain modest compared with the volumes that could follow the end of the U.S. trade embargo, and the re-opening of U.S. foreign investment in Cuba. In August 2015, bilateral trade between Canada and Cuba amounted to $100.7 million [Canadian dollars], compared with just $58.4 million in August 2000, and only $33 million in August 1990. From 2000 to 2008, the value of Canadian exports to Canada grew at an annual rate of 11 per cent, while imports from Cuba grew at a rate of 10 per cent. Ontario is the largest provincial exporter to Cuba, followed by Quebec. Manitoba and British Columbia have been the fastest-growing provincial exporters in recent years, according to a report by the Library of Parliament in Ottawa.

Mark Entwistle, a former Canadian ambassador to Cuba (1993-1997) and a founding partner of Acasta Capital, a Toronto-based investment firm, recalls the long decades when Canadian diplomats were the only representatives of any Western democracy at Havana cocktail parties, “Among Western democracies, Canada is the only one that never broke relations with Cuba even once,” Entwistle added.

Canadians imported Cuban sugar, rum and cigars, while exporting a lot of machinery and equipment that “Cuba could no longer get from the United States,” explained Ritter. During the 1990s, when the Soviet Union stopped subsidizing Cuba, the island’s economy “really deteriorated,” added Ritter, “and ties with Canada really intensified. Cuba decided it needed tourism, so it promoted that sector. We became the big tourist country for Cuba, and people said, ‘Cuba’s best friend is the Canadian winter.’” Nowadays, Cuba ranks as the third-most popular overseas destination for Canadians – after only the United States and Mexico – while Canada is Cuba’s largest source of foreign tourists; over one million Canadians visit each year, or more than 40 per cent of all foreign visitors to Cuba.

Burned by Cuba’s ups and downs

During the 1990s, Cuba opened up its economy “a little bit” to foreign enterprises, added Ritter. The mining sector became the focal point of great activity as “a lot of Canadian companies went down there to see if they could prove any commercially viable mineral resources. They all came back empty-handed after a few years, but they were really optimistic because Russia had done the surveying. The Canadian companies thought they just needed to do the work on the ground,” Ritter went on. It turned out that things weren’t so simple.

Other Canadian enterprises went there, but few were successful, noted Ritter. “There were Canadian hotels that pulled out. There was interest in time-share condominiums, and the Cubans changed their mind on that, so that did not go forward. More recently, in the late 2000s, a number of Canadian enterprises made arrangements to invest fairly massive amounts of money in golf courses and related resorts. But those have been put back on the shelf; nothing has happened. I think the Cubans changed their minds [about that],” lamented Ritter. Overall, “The rules have been so fuzzy that every decision is sort of a customized ad hoc decision. The rules of the game come down to case by case decisions by Cubans.”

The only major Canadian firm to enjoy enduring success was Toronto-based Sherritt International, a resource company with interests in nickel and cobalt mining, oil and gas exploration and production, and electricity generation. Ritter said that Sherritt has been “wildly successful for Cuba and for Sherritt.” However, Sherritt’s huge success has not been repeated by other Canadian firms in the Cuban energy sector. In 2009, Pebercan, Inc., a Montreal-based oil producer, was notified by the Cuban government that it would scrap its production-sharing contract with the Canadian firm. That contract, signed by Pebercan and the Cuban government in 1993, had been scheduled to expire in 2018. Neither party to the contract ever announced any reason for the government’s decision to cancel it.

Goodwill is like an isotope that is trickling down

George Petrolekas, a former Marketing Director of a Canadian telecom, who has traveled on business in Cuba, said that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conservative government “has been less receptive to links with Cuba than previous governments, which were Liberal.” During the late 1990s, “The most receptive Canadian governments were probably those of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and Jean Chretien, to a lesser extent.” Petrolekas said that Harper has been “far harder on Cuba” than other Prime Ministers, such as Brian Mulroney.

Entwistle argues that even under left-leaning Canadian Prime Ministers, Canada has not taken full advantage of existing opportunities to promote Canadian corporate exporters and investors. “Truth be told, no Canadian government of any political stripe has exercised the full weight of instruments available to it for things like trade promotion.” Entwistle believes that Export Development Canada (EDC), which provides Canadian exporters with financing, has “never been overly active in Cuba, in terms of supporting Canadian business. Canadian business has done its own thing in Cuba, regardless of the government.”

Nor have there been a sufficient number of high-level visitors from Ottawa, waving the Canadian flag to drum up new business. Entwistle said, “There have been some political visits; Pierre Trudeau came in 1976; he was the first NATO-member state leader to do so. [Jean] Chretien also went—partly because Trudeau went.” Would it help if the next Canadian Prime Minister paid such a visit? “Hypothetically, if you had a Liberal government, there would be some explosion of activity on the part of the government of Canada in pursuing its relationship; but I think it will probably be business as usual. No government does tremendous damage to the relationship because it does tend to have its own rhythm, and you have this huge number of Canadians who go as tourists; well over a million a year.”

The sluggishness of the relationship defies the rosy expectations of earlier generations of Canadian business leaders. “At least one generation of Canadians in public life always believed that Canada had a special relationship with Cuba,” Entwistle continued. There was an assumption that “this relationship would translate into some sort of privileged access; an ability to leverage the relationship; to acquire things or positions – decisions from the government of Cuba that we want to see. The whole Canadian foreign policy establishment believed that for a long time.”

This presumption of privileged access has turned out to be false, said Entwistle. “While Cubans are very respectful of Canada and they value the relationship very much, we don’t have any special access or privileges in Cuba. We’re in competition with everyone else; you have to earn your keep; earn your way.” Ritter agreed that “Canadians had said for so long that we had built up a lot of goodwill in Cuba – and that it would pay off in the future.” Not true. And yet as early as 2002, when President George W. Bush enabled U.S. exports of pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs to Cuba, Canadians were disappointed with the reaction of their Cuban customers. As soon as lower-priced food became available from the United States, the Cubans switched to it, despite the ongoing U.S. trade embargo in other product sectors. Canada’s business activity in Cuba has been further hampered by the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which penalizes all foreign companies that do business in Cuba by preventing them from doing business legally in the United States.

Reviving the special relationship

Overall, argued Entwistle, “Canada has an asset that has been created by the 70 years of unbroken ties, but it is being squandered. The goodwill of the relationship on which Canada dined out for a long time is like an isotope with a half-life. It is trickling down and has not been replenished sufficiently. ”

What measures would Entwistle take with respect to Cuba if he were Prime Minister of Canada? First of all, “I would increase the number of political visits at the ministerial level. In a country like Cuba, those kinds of visits, led by [cabinet level] ministers have real value. They signify the importance of the relationship; they provide entrée and access to senior decision makers in the Cuban government. [Canada’s] global competitors have been very active in this. “

In the wake of the normalization of U.S. diplomatic ties with Cuba, senior ministers from several major trading nations have descended on Havana in recent months, accompanied by senior executives from major corporations headquartered in those countries. For example, the President of France brought some 70 French companies; the Spanish prime minister, almost the same number; and likewise from Mexico and elsewhere. Meanwhile, Canadian leadership have undertaken no such large-scale missions in Cuba, of late, perhaps out of a sense that such missions are not necessary, given the decades of mutual goodwill. Despite Canada’s world-famous expertise in telecommunications, Orange S.A., the French telecom company, signed a deal to assist in the development of Cuba’s (government monopoly) telephone network in July 2014. “It’s the kind of deal we could have done, but we just didn’t bother to go there and do it,” Entwistle said.

What role can Canadians play in the Cuba of the future?

The Cuban government has outlined the important role to be played by foreign investment flows in the sustainable development of the country. In 2014, Cuba’s minister for foreign trade and investment said on state TV that the country needs a sufficient volume of foreign capital in order to achieve its economic growth target of 7 per cent a year. Its goal is attract $2 billion to $2.5 billion in foreign direct investments each year, notes Philip Peters, President of the Cuba Research Center. Peters says that target is “pretty ambitious,” given the fact during the entire 1990s, Cuba managed to attract a total of only $4 billion to $5 billion in inward foreign investment.

What will that expansion mean for Canadians? Economist Ritter believes that there are two ways of looking at the ultimate impact of the arrival of so many Americans on Cuban soil. One of those ways is positive; the other is negative. “There will be two kinds of effect. One will be a squeezing out effect in some areas. But there isn’t that much to be squeezed out, so I don’t think we lose so much,” added Ritter, in terms of current Canadian market share in Cuba; given the limited range of Canadian success stories in the world of industry.

When it comes to the tourism sector, there is a divergence of views. Ritter said that “a second squeezing-out effect will take place in the tourism industry, as the tsunami of tourists arrives from the United States. They could squeeze out a lot of Canadians,” given the fact that the typical Canadian tourist in Cuba has a more modest budget than his or her counterpart from the United States. Other analysts, including Entwistle, believe that there will be plenty of room in Cuba – the largest island in the Caribbean – for tourists traveling on all kinds of budgets, from modest cottages suitable for hippies to jet-set plutocrats. The key is to build the infrastructure that supports that expansion for all segments of the market. That’s an area where Canada can fill the gap with additional capital.

A range of enticing new opportunities may open for Canadians to export to Cuba and invest in that country, in partnership with Americans and other newcomers to the island. If the newly pragmatic Cuban government is as transparent as optimists say it will be, Canadians will be making more money in Cuba even if they wind up owning a smaller share of a much larger Cuban pie. Some Canadian companies could play a key role as intermediaries; consultants who advise and partner with U.S. companies that don’t already know Cuba the way a handful of Canadians know it. Apart from their greater familiarity with Cuba, argues Petrolekas, Canadians have this advantage: “There is not a sense that we [Canadians] are there to exploit Cubans. They like us from that standpoint. There are enough companies that operate cross-border between the U.S. and Canada, and we can certainly assist in that.”

How Canadians can improve their chances of success in Cuba

What steps can Canadians take to improve their chances of success? Entwistle notes that “the trick to improving your chances in Cuba is to align [your initiatives] with the Cuban government’s priorities, which have more to do with the real, basic economy than with the bells and whistles of advanced high-technology [economies]. The Cubans are remarkably smart. They have a home-grown leadership that is very serious, very earnest, analytical and methodical.”

Entwistle advises Canadians to study the priorities outlined in the 2014 foreign investment law, which target agricultural development; basic manufacturing, including such substitutes for imports as glass bottles and aluminum cans; and renewable energy, including wind power. In the past, Cuba has benefitted from low-priced, subsidized energy imports from Venezuela, but that country has been suffering economic and political disarray. That makes it riskier than ever for Cuba to depend on Venezuela for low-priced energy imports in the future, industry analysts agree. Another Cuban priority is biotechnology: Close to a dozen biotech institutes have been built in Cuba; meanwhile, Novartis and AstraZeneca – two European pharma companies – have a significant presence in the country.

Tourism remains particularly enticing. Cuba is looking for foreign partners to expand its hotel sector infrastructure quickly, in preparation for the huge flood of American tourists. Canadians may also be able to leverage growing demand for ‘medical tourism,’ which could develop into a huge source of revenue for the island, and for joint-venture partners from capitalist countries. World-famous for its quality, the Cuban medical system is offering medical services for Canadians via Health Services International (Servimed), an agency officially recognized by Cuba’s national medical system. Demand for such services is expected to grow, as well, in the United States, once full trade relations are normalized.

In conclusion, cautions Entwistle, “Cuba is not an economy that is for profiteering in any way; or for get-rich schemes, or getting in and out. This is a long-haul, strategic, patient market that is evolving in front of our eyes; at a very Cuban pace. You need a longer term vision. The companies that have been successful in Cuba have that long term vision, which allows them to ride the fluctuations of the daily ups and downs of doing the actual business. My advice is do less pitching and more listening. And if your business is in areas that are Cuba’s priorities, then you have a real good chance.” If he’s right, Canadians’ cultural aversion to flashy, get-rich-quick salesmanship could work out to their advanta

Posted in Blog | Tagged Cuba-Canada Relations, Foreign Investment, Foreign Trade | Leave a comment

LET’S MAKE A DEAL: DOING BUSINESS IN CUBA

Posted on December 21, 2015 by Arch Ritter

William M. LeoGrande, Professor at American University in Washington, D.C.

Original article here: Doing Business in Cuba

By the first anniversary of President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro’s decision to normalize relations last December 17, much had been achieved on the diplomatic front. But progress on the commercial front has been lagging, and unless both sides realize significant economic gains before Obama leaves office, the momentum toward lifting the embargo and fully normalizing relations could be lost.

The initial surge of excitement among U.S. businesses after December 17 was palpable: finally, an opportunity to enter a largely unexploited market, forbidden for half a century. In the past year, a parade of trade delegations has visited Havana. In April 2015, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo took a group of 20 New York business leaders. In September, Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas led an agricultural trade mission hoping to expand food sales. In November, Texas Governor Greg Abbott followed suit. Legislators and local officials led other trade delegations from Alabama, California, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Tampa, Florida.

In March 2015, the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba–a broad-based group formed after December 17 to promote agricultural trade–took 95 people to Cuba, including two former secretaries of agriculture. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched the U.S.-Cuba Business Council representing over two dozen major corporations, including Caterpillar, Kraft Heinz, Sprint, Boeing, Home Depot, and American Airlines. In October, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker went to Cuba, followed in November by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

Cuba needs the trade and investment that U.S. businesses can offer, and Cuban leaders appear eager to expand commercial ties. Yet despite this enthusiasm, few deals have actually been signed. “Up until now it has been going down. looking around, and saying, ‘this is an interesting place, but how do I make money here’?” explained deputy assistant secretary of state Alex Lee at a forum on doing business with Cuba organized by The Economist.

The case of The Home Depot, Inc. illustrates both the opportunities and the obstacles. Some 90 percent of Cubans own their own homes, most of which are in desperate need of repair. Dilapidated structures dot the island, from houses in need of a new coat of paint to apartment buildings literally falling down.

One way Havana has tried to ease the housing problem is by letting people do it themselves. Tens of thousands of families have taken advantage of new government grants and loans to finance home renovations. In 2015, private owners and contractors built more new housing units than the state construction company. That boom translates into a huge demand for tools and building materials–and a huge business opportunity for Home Depot.

The giant home improvement retailer is clearly interested. It is a founding member of the new U.S.-Cuba Business Council, and regional export manager, Heriberto Correa, attended the council’s inaugural meeting held in Cuba during Havana’s International Trade Fair. The Obama administration’s new regulations specifically license the sale of construction materials for private buildings, so Home Depot could legally sell to private Cuban construction cooperatives, contractors, and private home-owners.

It could even rent or build a warehouse in Cuba’s new Special Development Zone at the port of Mariel, where imports are duty-free and new businesses enjoy a ten-year tax holiday. In fact, any U.S. business legally selling goods to Cuba could take advantage of the favorable terms available for establishing facilities in the Mariel zone. And if the Cuban government would allow it, the company could open its own retail outlets and import a fleet of delivery trucks to ship goods from the warehouse to the stores.

Yet when asked if Home Depot planned to enter the Cuban market, the company’s CEO Craig Menear replied cautiously. “Cuba is an area we’re watching carefully,” he said. “We know at some in time when the environment is right, there’s opportunity for The Home Depot to be there. But we believe that before we go in there, it needs to benefit the people of Cuba.”

Caterpillar is another company well-situated to enter the Cuban market. Obama has licensed sales to Cuba’s private farms and cooperative, which are in serious need of better equipment. Moreover, Caterpillar is no late-comer to the island: it first called for an end to the U.S. embargo in 1998, and in 2004 donated generators to Cuban hospitals. “Caterpillar wants to do business in Cuba,” said Bill Lane, senior director of global government and corporate affairs. “Everything Caterpillar makes in the United States is needed in Cuba.” The company hopes to open a dealership on the island, Lane told The Economist‘s Cuba Summit in December, but it has yet to sign any contracts.

So why has progress been so slow?

To be sure, there are difficulties in doing business with Havana. Cuba’s infrastructure– its roads, energy grid, and digital network– lags behind neighboring countries. Foreign companies must still hire labor through the state’s hiring agency. Cuba’s bureaucracy is notoriously slow to make decisions and opaque, making dispute resolution problematic. But, as David Pathe, CEO of Canada’s Sherritt Corp., one of the island’s largest foreign investors, put it, “There is nothing unique about Cuba”– these are the kinds of problems companies face in any new foreign market.

The larger issue making U.S. companies reluctant to enter the Cuban market is uncertainty on the U.S. side. Although the Obama administration wants to see U.S. businesses engage with Cuba to demonstrate the benefits of the president’s new policy, the regulatory changes made thus far still leave too many obstacles in the way. If companies are not absolutely certain that their business plan is legal, they will not take the risk.

Financial regulations are a particular problem. Finance is the life blood of commerce; if funds cannot be easily transferred between Cuba and the United States, business will remain negligible. Although U.S. regulations allow for fund transfers involving licensed activities, companies are terrified of inadvertently violating the rules and being hit with enormous fines.

For example, it took months for the State Department to find a bank willing to handle accounts for Cuba’s diplomatic mission in Washington because the costs of regulatory compliance far outweighed the profit. Stonegate Bank in Florida finally agreed to do it because, as CEO David Seleski put it, they regarded it as a “moral obligation” to help re-establish diplomatic relations. Earlier this month, the Treasury Department had to reassure U.S. banks that they could process fund transfers to Cuba involving authorized travel without themselves having to certify that the travel was, indeed, legal.

The ultimate solution to these problems is to lift the U.S. embargo in its entirety, but that is not likely to happen in an election year when Republicans control Congress. In the meantime, President Obama should issue another round of regulatory changes that clarify what can and cannot be done.

In the financial area, Obama could license U.S. businesses to provide credit to Cuban customers to stimulate nonagricultural trade (agricultural credits are prohibited by law). He could authorize Cuban banks to establish correspondence accounts with U.S. banks to facilitate payments to Cuban customers. Finally, he could issue a general license to U.S. banks to process dollar-denominated transactions conducted by foreign banks (so-called “U-turn” transactions) that must be processed through a U.S. financial institution.

President Obama’s opening to Cuba was historic, but to make it irreversible, the policy needs to produce results–especially in the field of commerce. The interest is clearly there on both sides, but the barriers are still formidable. The exceptions to the embargo that the president has authorized thus far are impressive and lay the groundwork, but they have not yet gone far enough to reassure U.S. businesses that they can safely enter the Cuban market without running afoul of U.S. law.

As Cuba’s economic reforms open the country to foreign trade and investment, U.S. companies risk being left behind as competitors from Canada, China, and Europe jump in ahead of them. Companies that enter the market early and build relationships with their Cuban counterparts stand to benefit the most in the long run. As Caterpillar’s Bill Lane, an aficionado of the seafood in Havana’s private restaurants, put it, “The first movers in Cuba get the lobster.”

Posted in Blog | Tagged Foreign Investment, Foreign Trade, US-Cuba Normalization | Leave a comment

HOW CUBA IS, AND ISN’T, CHANGING, ONE YEAR AFTER THE THAW WITH THE U.S.

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Arch Ritter

By Nick Miroff December 15 at 7:00 AM

HAVANA — No event in decades shook up Cuba like the announcement last Dec. 17 by presidents Obama and Raul Castro that their countries would begin normalizing long-broken relations. In the 12 months since, Cubans have witnessed scenes few expected to see in their lifetimes, or at least in the lifetimes of Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul.

A U.S. flag snaps once again in the sea breeze outside a U.S. embassy in Havana. Raul Castro and Obama held talks on the sidelines of a hemispheric summit in April. So many U.S. politicians, corporate executives, foreign leaders, tourists and celebrities have visited, that an island long known for isolation suddenly feels it is at the center of the world.

The psychological impact of these events, however, has far outpaced any physical one. So far, U.S. businesses have only completed a handful of new deals. Cuba remains the only closed, one-party state in the Americas, and if anything, normalization with Washington has left communist authorities increasingly anxious about dissent and more determined to stifle it.

Cuba is still very much the same country it was a year ago. And yet, not quite.

“For a lot of my friends who are university graduates, the news was positive, and we saw it as the beginning of a long and complicated process,” said Lenier Gonzalez, a founder of the group Cuba Posible, which advocates gradual reform. But for more of the population, “it produced an unrealistic expectation

That third group of Cubans heard in Obama’s words last Dec. 17 a cue to flee. They fear normalization will put an end to the immigration rules that essentially bestow residency and welfare benefits on any Cuban who reaches U.S. soil.

As many as 70,000 Cubans have left for the United States in the past year, in what appears to be the largest wave of migration from the island in decades.

The Legal Emigration Route to the USA: Early Morning Queue outside the American Embassy, April 2015

The changes of the past year have set Cuban authorities on edge too, bringing an escalating crackdown on public protest or opposition activity.

Dozens, even hundreds of activists are detained or arrested each Sunday, when the Ladies in White dissident group attempts to march in Havana and another group, the Patriotic Union of Cuba, stages a weekly mobilization in Santiago, the island’s second- largest city.

Though the government generally no longer locks up dissidents for long prison terms, it increasingly relies on short-term arrests to block protests by activists it considers “mercenaries” at the service of foreign interests.

The illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission of Human Rights and Reconciliation tallied 1,447 political arrests or arbitrary detentions in November, the highest monthly total in years.

In an interview published Monday, Obama said that the United States would continue to support Cuban rights activists and that he was considering a trip to the island — but on the condition that he can meet with dissidents. “If I go on a visit, then part of the deal is that I get to talk to everybody,” he said, in an interview with Yahoo News.

“Our original theory on this was not that we were going to see immediate changes or loosening of the control of the Castro regime, but rather that over time you’d lay the predicates for substantial transformation,” said Obama, whom surveys show is a widely popular figure on the island.

Cuban officials this year have tried to push back at public perceptions that Obama is a friend and the United States is no longer a threat or a foe. Relations will not be truly normal, they insist, until Washington lifts its trade embargo, closes the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay and makes reparations for a half-century of economic sanctions and other grievances.

Yet the rivalry has morphed from hostile confrontation into something more sportsmanlike: a low-intensity contest to set the pace of change, with Washington trying to move faster and Cuba preferring slow, cautious steps.

As Rafael Hernandez, editor of the Cuban journal Temas, put it: “We’ve traded a boxing ring for a chess board.”

For all its revolutionary slogans and lore, Cuba can be a profoundly conservative place, in the strict definition of the term. It is a country where the television programming, food rations and newspaper editorials seem to remain the same, year in, year out. This drives young Cubans crazy. But the continuity is a comfort to some, not least the communist party elders who have ruled for 57 years.

Raul Castro, 84, has pledged to step down in February 2018. Obama has 13 months left in office. That leaves a narrow window for the two men who charted the normalization course to see it through.

Rarely does a week go by without some new chess move. The Obama administration in May took Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism, paving the way for the countries to formally reestablish diplomatic ties in July.

The two countries have signed new agreements on environmental cooperation. They’ve enhanced anti-narcotics enforcement. Direct mail service is set to resume on a trial basis. U.S. and Cuban officials have even started discussing their oldest grievances, opening negotiations to settle billions in U.S. property claims and Cuban counter-claims.

The U.S. secretaries of agriculture, commerce and state have all visited Havana in the past year, along with dozens of U.S. lawmakers, adding up to the highest-level government contacts in decades.

A U.S. tourism tsunami still seems to be building. U.S. travel to Cuba increased by 40 percent since last December, according to industry estimates. Overall tourism to Cuba increased nearly 20 percent, bringing billions in additional revenue for the government.

“Our booking activity has been off the charts,” said Tom Popper, president of Insight Cuba, the largest U.S.-based provider of the licensed “people-to-people” travel permitted under U.S. law.

Most of the U.S. travelers have come to Havana, where a shortage of hotel beds has kicked off a scramble among Cubans and their foreign business partners to buy, renovate and rent properties. Each city block seems to have at least one crew of contractors patching cracks and applying paint.

A deal to reestablish regular commercial flights between the two countries is said to be imminent, with United, JetBlue, American Airlines and other U.S. carriers pledging to begin service as soon as they’re cleared by the two governments.

Cuba established a direct phone link with a U.S. company, IDT, and a roaming agreement with Sprint. It has set up nearly 50 outdoor WiFi hotspots at parks and boulevards across the island, where Cubans gather round-the-clock to chat with friends and relatives overseas.

But the initial Cuba excitement among U.S. companies has been replaced by something more “sober” a year later, said James Williams, president of Engage Cuba, a group lobbying to lift the embargo.

Williams said he knew of at least two-dozen U.S. companies that had submitted formal business proposals to the Castro government, aimed at taking advantage of more flexible rules. “I would imagine it’s probably in the hundreds,” he said.

The companies want to lease office space, build warehouses, dock cruise ships and ferries. Not one has gotten a green light so far, he said.

“Frankly I think the Cubans have been overwhelmed with a surge in interest and the decentralized nature of how that interest is coming to them, with companies calling them up, consultants coming to them, and not a lot of clarity about how to make a deal,” said Williams. “The non-responsiveness has slowed things down.”

Posted in Blog | Tagged Emigration, Foreign Investment, Tourism, US-Cuba Normalization | Leave a comment

Airbnb: A US FIRM MANAGES TO CRACK THE CUBAN MARKET

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Arch Ritter

By: Reem Nasr

CNBC, Tuesday, 5 May 2015

Original article here: Airbnb in Cuba

Airbnb Site on Cuba

Tatiana Zuniga started to rent out rooms in her Havana home two weeks into the new year. She had never done it before, but decided, along with her family, that it would be a good way to supplement their income.

Then about three months ago, Zuniga decided to try to attract a new type of visitor—tourists from North America. She connected with Airbnb, the U.S. accommodations broker, and listed her rooms for $33 a night. “They are basically teaching us how to make this a lucrative business,” she told CNBC in a telephone interview. “We are really taught how to reach out to clients and have them come to our home, our neighborhood and our city.”

Zuniga’s rooms are booked through the beginning of June. “It’s very good to get into the North American market, and this is what they seem to be helping us to do,” she said.

“We are an Internet company, and there is a 5 percent Internet penetration in Cuba. We couldn’t expect that hosts would access the site on a daily basis.”-Molly Turner, head of civic partnerships, Airbnb

Zuniga isn’t the only one excited about attracting visitors from the north. Airbnb has taken advantage of an easing of relations between the United States and Cuba since President Barack Obama’s announcement last December that he would seek an opening of links between the countries. Changes to certain trade licenses made it possible for travel services firms, like Airbnb, to finally enter and do business in the long-forbidden Cuban market. It puts the company ahead of most U.S. firms that want to do business there.

“Cuba presented a different case for us because we’ve never launched a market before,” said Molly Turner, global head of civic partnerships at the company. “We had to adapt a lot of our system to the Cuban context.”

The San Francisco-based tech firm launched in late 2008, hoping to link renters and travelers around the world through the Internet. (It is one of Silicon Valley’s many “unicorns,” or start-ups worth more than $1 billion). Travelers can search on the site to rent entire homes or just rooms in 190 countries, most of them at a fraction of the cost of staying in a hotel.

Like many other American companies, Airbnb was banned from doing business in the communist nation until this year. But the company found early success when it launched in Cuba with 1,000 listings on April 2. A month later, it’s consistently adding more listings to the site. It took the company about three months to launch in Cuba because doing business there required a lot of due diligence, Turner said. First, the company had to get in touch with the State Department to make sure it was complying with all U.S. regulations.

“In the beginning, it wasn’t entirely clear to us how the regulations would apply,” Turner said. “We had to work collaboratively with the U.S. government, which meant regular phone calls with them to make sure everything we did was compliant with the law.”

The same applied to figuring out regulations on the Cuba side. That required sending several teams to the island to do research and meet with Cuban officials.

Hagar Chemali, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department and Office of Foreign Assets Contol , which deals with such trade issues, said that the government is doing a lot of private sector outreach to explain sanctions programs for Cuba and other countries. Interested companies should check the department’s website for more information, she said.

She wouldn’t comment on the specifics of working with Airbnb, but said, “it is very common for companies and individuals to reach out to OFAC to figure out sanctions compliance. In fact, we encourage and welcome that.”

Beyond tricky regulations, the company had to figure out how to do business in a country whose technology use lags much of the globe.

“We are an Internet company, and there is a 5 percent Internet penetration in Cuba,” Turner said. “We couldn’t expect that hosts would access the site on a daily basis.”

Because hosts use their listings on the Airbnb site to manage bookings and payments, the company had to reassess its expectations. Internet cafe culture is not big in Cuba, she explained, so people use the Internet at work to manage listings—providing they even have access on the job.

Zuniga is one of the lucky Cubans who can access the Internet at work, although she said the connection is slow. Like many others, she relies on the help of friends who have better connections at their places of work. “One always finds a way,” she said. “And I can’t miss out on the opportunity, so I try to make it work.”

Turner said that several Cuban hosts get help from friends and family in other countries to manager their online presence.

The company partnered with local payment companies that take payments from travelers made on the site, and put straight into the pockets of the hosts. “To the typical Airbnb customer, the website is no different, but we hacked the back end to make that possible,” Turner said. But Airbnb was lucky, said Turner, because it was able to capitalize on an already existing culture of Cubans who have been renting out their homes for years. The company was able to get into the market first and connect those hosts to the outside world.

“Airbnb was the perfect business at the perfect time,” she said. “If Obama’s talk had been five years ago, it would have been a different story.”

For Zuniga, using the site to list her home has been a start for her as a businesswoman—no small accomplishment for a nation where private property is largely forbidden. The company takes 3 percent of the rental fee she charges.

SOME AIRBNB RENTAL ROOMS IN CUBA, from the Airbnb web site.

Posted in Blog | Tagged Economic Reforms, Foreign Investment, Tourism, US-Cuba Normalization | Leave a comment

Brookings Institution: CUBA’S ECONOMIC CHANGE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Arch Ritter

Edited by RICHARD E. FEINBERG AND TED PICCONE

Full Document Here: Brookings, 2014: Cuba’s Economic Change

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction and Overview Richard Feinberg

Policies for Economic Growth: Cuba’s New Era, Juan Triana Cordovi and Ricardo Torres Pérez

Economic Transformations and Institutional Changes in Cuba. Antonio F. Romero Gómez

Institutional Changes of Cuba’s Economic-Social Reforms: State and Market Roles, Progress, Hurdles, Comparisons, Monitoring and Effect. Carmelo Mesa-Lago

Economic Growth and Restructuring through Trade and FDI: Costa Rican Experiences of Interest to Cuba, Alberto Trejos

Monetary Reform in Cuba Leading up to 2016: Between Gradualism and the “Big Bang” Pavel Vidal Alejandro and Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva

Exchange Rate Unification: The Cuban Case. Augusto de la Torre and Alain Ize

Posted in Blog | Tagged Econmic Institutions, Economic Growth, Economic Recovery, Exchange Rate Policy, Foreign Investment, Foreign Trade, Monetary System | Leave a comment

CANADIAN CEO RETURNS HOME AFTER IMPRISONMENT IN CUBA

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Arch Ritter

DANIEL TROTTA

HAVANA — Reuters; , Feb. 21 2015, 2:00 PM EST

Original here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadian-ceo-returns-home-after-imprisonment-in-cuba/article23139650/

Cuba has freed Canadian businessman Cy Tokmakjian after more than three years in jail, his company said on Saturday, resolving a case that had strained Cuban-Canadian relations and alarmed foreign investors.

Tokmakjian, founder of the Ontario-based company, was convicted of bribery and other charges and sentenced to 15 years in September in what the transportation company had called a “show trial” and a “travesty of justice.”

Cuban prosecutors had outlined a pattern in which Tokmakjian wooed Cuban officials and their families with a series of gifts, helping the Tokmakjian Group do business estimated at $80 million annually with Cuba until the company was shuttered and its founder arrested in September 2011.

Tokmakjian “was welcomed home by his family, friends, and thousands of employees,” said the company statement, which also thanked the Canadian government. A spokesman said the 74-year-old was released early Saturday.

The statement made no mention of two Canadian aides from the Tokmakjian Group, Claudio Vetere and Marco Puche, who were also convicted and sentenced to 12 and 8 years. They had been under house arrest pending trial and while their convictions were being appealed.

Fourteen Cubans including the former deputy sugar minister and the former director of the state nickel company were also convicted and sentenced to terms ranging from 6 to 20 years.

Foreign companies and diplomats had raised concerns that Tokmakjian’s case could scare off investors while Cuba was actively seeking foreign capital. It also annoyed Canada, a major trading partner.

“His ordeal is a cautionary tale to any investor who thinks the Cuban playing field is level,” said Peter Kent, Tokmakjian’s member of parliament.

Cuba seized about $100 million worth of company assets including bank accounts, inventory and office supplies, a ruling the company was challenging in international arbitration.

No immediate reason was given for the sudden release of Tokmakjian, whom Cuba had previously hailed as a model business partner over 20 years for supplying crucial transportation equipment during a severe economic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The company was later caught up in an investigation of Cuba’s international trading sector, part of a crackdown on corruption.

Cy Tokmakjian

Throughout the time Tokmakjian was tried in June and sentenced in September, the Canadian government was helping the United States and Cuba by serving as host to secret talks on restoring diplomatic ties.

It was unknown whether Canada’s role had any influence on Tokmakjian’s release.

Posted in Blog | Tagged Corruption, Cuba-Canada Relations, Foreign Investment | Leave a comment

CANADIANS SUDDENLY RACING NOT TO SQUANDER HEAD START IN CUBA

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Arch Ritter

Peter Kuitenbrouwer | January 30, 2015, Financial Post

Original here: Canadians Suddenly Racing

Mark Entwistle could not resist a smile at lunch time Tuesday as he gazed out over a packed room at Gowlings’ head office in Toronto’s First Canadian Place office tower. He had not seen some of these lawyers and business leaders in many years.

“In the mid 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba was the new frontier,” Mr. Entwisle, Canada’s ambassador to Cuba from 1993 to 1997, recalls in a later interview. “We had almost an invasion of junior Canadian mining companies. We were doing all kinds of deals. Then Cuba stopped experimenting as much with foreign investment. Bre-X happened on the mining side, and all the juniors left because the money dried up.” The U.S. Helms Burton Act of 1996, which penalized foreign (such as Canadian) companies trading with Cuba, also scared companies off.

The world shifted again Dec. 17, when Raúl Castro, president of Cuba, and Barack Obama, president of the United States, restored diplomatic relations after 55 years. On Bay Street, Cuba is sexy again.

“You can tell Cuba’s kind of moved its way up the food chain,” Mr. Entwistle joked to the assembled at the Gowlings lunch, “The new Cuba equation: the Cuban economy, Canada’s opportunity and America’s new place,” organized by the Canadian Council for the Americas. A think tank with a 40-year history, the council holds events to discuss politics and business in the Western Hemisphere.

On the surface this interest in Cuba seems paradoxical. Canada never broke diplomatic relations with Cuba after its revolution in 1959, and Canadians have longstanding and deep connections with Cuba, as tourists and as investors. Why show interest in Cuba now that the U.S. is thawing relations? To some extent, with the exception of Sherritt International Corp. — which generates about 75% of its income from nickel it mines in Cuba — Canada has squandered its opportunity to solidify its place as the premier business partner with Cuba during the many years when U.S. policy froze out American companies. But that is just half the story.

Cuba has been reluctant to let anyone invest very much in its economy; foreign direct investment in Cuba is less than a tenth of 1% of gross domestic product. That policy of going it alone has kept out many Canadians, too. U.S. laws have also frightened off Canadians. Now, with Cuba and the U.S. playing footsie, investors sense that Cuba may be opening up more generally, offering renewed opportunities for Canadians, who already know Cuba well, to make some money.

“The interest is rising again, getting back on the radar screens where it had been off,” Mr. Entwistle says, sipping an espresso macchiato in Nespresso, a grand coffee shop near his office that feels more like a Mercedes dealership. He arrived home from Havana on the very day of the US-Cuba deal. “I got off the plane on Dec. 17, my BlackBerry was exploding with stuff,” he says.

Mark Entwistle

Mr. Entwistle has teamed up with Belinda Stronach, the former MP and Magna International Inc. executive, and Anthony Melman, a former managing director at Onex Corp., among others, to form a boutique merchant bank, Acasta Capital. One investment that interests the firm: Cuba. In the past month Americans have started calling him, seeking his advice on investing in Cuba, he says.

At the Cuba lunch, Mr. Entwistle warned Canadians not to be smug about their connection to that country.

“There is this mythology that we have a special influence with the Cuban government. That does not give Canada a free ride in Cuba. Cuba is already a bustling, crowded place. Canadians will have to compete head-on.” Despite Canada’s world-class expertise in telecom, he noted, Orange SA, the French telecom company active across Europe and Africa, recently signed a deal to help Cuba’s telephone system. “It’s the kind of deal we could have done,” he says. “We just didn’t bother to go there and do it.”

And there was one consensus in the room: Cuba is poised for takeoff. Juan Triana Cordoví, an economist at the University of Havana, spelled out the potential of his country. Cuba’s health care system is among the best in the Americas; its infant mortality rate is below that of the United States. Of its 10.5 million people, 11% have a university education. Cuba has 14 universities. At the same time, he did not seem overly optimistic about the possibility of more foreign investment. Mr. Triana also noted the impressive bond between Cuba and Canada: 1.2 million Canadians visited Cuba in 2014, compared with just 90,000 Americans.

“That was one of the best things about Cuba,” a lawyer at the lunch in Toronto remarked ruefully. “No Americans.”

Now the Yanks are coming. By one estimate, with the Obama administration relaxing rules on travel, a half-million Americans will visit Cuba this year. “Too many Americans in Cuba,” one Cuban remarked at the lunch.

The Canadian Council for the Americas brought the same panel to a Wednesday event at the Borden, Ladner Gervais law firm in Ottawa. Diplomats from Switzerland, Indonesia, Korea and the Dominican Republic attended. Ken Frankel, who runs the Canadian Council for the Americas out of Washington, D.C., says Canadians’ current interest in Cuba is partly motivated by fear. “Does this mean that U.S. business is going to flood into Cuba and push out the Canadians?” he asks.

Americans are certainly keenly interested. Devry Boughner Vorwerk, vice-president of legal affairs at Cargill, Inc., the agricultural giant, heads the U.S. Agricultural Coalition for Cuba, and spoke to the Toronto lunch from Washington via Skype.

Agriculture in Cuba has a lot of upside potential, thanks to rich soil and an educated workforce, experts agree. “You throw seeds in the ground and things grow,” says Mr. Entwistle. “You have a professional agronomist class.” However, historically Cuba has focused on growing sugar, and the country has little farm equipment. “Conceivably Cuba could become a major exporter of fruits and vegetables to the U.S.,” he suggests. “There is a perfect storm of untapped ingredients for agriculture.” Brazil has already begun to invest in agriculture in the island nation.

“I am working with people in agriculture,” Mr. Entwistle said, declining to name them. “I think it’s a big strategic sector for Canadian interests.”

Ricardo Alcolado Perez, who grew up in Cuba, runs his own law practice in Toronto and helps Canadian companies invest in Cuba. But many investors are gun shy. Historically, Cuba defaulted on some of its debts to Canadians, he says. U.S. laws pose another obstacle. It may seem odd, given the flood of Canadian tourists, that Canadians have not invested in hotels in Cuba, as the Spanish have. “The Four Seasons are not going to go to Cuba, over fear of losing business with the U.S. They also face the risk of being incarcerated,” he notes.

“I am working on a few projects,” Mr. Alcolado Perez adds. “One is a Canadian company who would like to raise funds in B.C. to build a hotel in Cuba.” He also has U.S. clients who do business in Cuba through Canadian firms. Information technology also offers opportunity, he adds.

“In the last 10 years Cuba has invested in training high-tech specialists. There are a lot of young guys who are very skilled,” says Mr. Alcolado Perez. “Already companies in Canada outsource software development to Cuba.”

In the last 10 years Cuba has invested in training high-tech specialists. There are a lot of young guys who are very skilled

Tom Timmins, a partner at Gowlings, heads the firm’s global renewable energy law practise. Like many Caribbean countries, Cuba produces electricity with generators powered by imported bunker oil, he says — even though wind energy costs 6.7¢ per kilowatt-hour, compared with up to 35¢ for diesel. Mr. Timmins is working with Carbon War Room, a charity founded by Richard Branson of the Virgin Group, to help Caribbean islands generate power from wind, solar and biomass.

“Cuba has a goal of 40% renewables and I think they will exceed that,” he says. “Because of [Ontario’s] feed-in tariff program, we’ve gotten really good at renewable energy and integrating it into the grid. A lot of the solar panels and wind turbines will be coming from China, but we can supply Canadian project developers, Canadian equity and Canadian debt.”

Cuba also has reserves in gold, silver, copper, other metals, as well as oil and gas.

Not much will change overnight, though. Polls show Americans favour lifting the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba, but Mr. Obama, a Democrat, will face challenges getting a bill through the Republican-controlled Congress. And Cuba, concerned about social cohesion, will move cautiously to expand its small private sector.

Even so, the stars are aligning for major change in Cuba, and Canada will be there, says Mr. Entwistle.

“This not a hermit kingdom,” he says. “It is not an isolated place, but it’s one of the few markets around with a sense of untapped potential. There are a lot of ingredients for an economic takeoff in Cuba.”

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