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Cuba announces a plan to allow some foreign investment in local commerce

2022-08-17T03:08:36.902Z


For the first time, the regime authorizes foreign investors to own majority businesses. "It's a step in the right direction, but too little too late," says an economist of the move.


By Reuters via

NBC News

Cuba plans to allow some foreign investment in local wholesale and retail trade for the first time since Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959, the government said late on Monday, in an attempt to emerge from the island nation's worst economic crisis in decades. .

Deputy Trade Minister Ana Teresita González said on a late-night television show that foreign investors will be able to own local wholesalers for the first time or enter the market through joint ventures.

Retail trade would be more restricted, but it opened the door to some public/private companies in that sector as well.

The reforms would open up the possibility

for foreign-owned entities to invest in back-end warehousing and logistics operations that supply state and private companies

, for example, by supporting the country's effort to improve efficiency in its notoriously unproductive retail sector.

View of downtown Havana.Getty Images

González also stated that Cuba will "selectively" allow some foreign investors to enter the retail market, as long as the investment contributes to the country's socialist objectives and reduces prices.

Domestic Trade Minister Betsy Díaz Velázquez said on the same talk show that the state would maintain its dominance in retail but would allow some public-private joint ventures.

["I didn't leave because I wanted to, they exiled me".

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"We will give priority to this type of initiatives

with foreign investors who are already in Cuba and allied countries," he reported.

The moves come at a time when Cuba is struggling to redefine its largely closed state economy after two years of trouble from the pandemic and blanket U.S. sanctions that have hampered recovery.

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Growing discontent over long lines for basic goods, fuel shortages and rolling blackouts have prompted Communist Party officials to speed up long-delayed plans to reform the Soviet-style state economy.

Both officials said late Monday that the goal was to put more raw materials and goods into the hands of the island's producers and consumers, but economists and businessmen polled by Reuters said the measures were likely to fall short.

[The Biden administration relaxes the rules for sending remittances and traveling to Cuba, reversing a Trump policy]

"It's a step in the right direction.

but too little and too late,” said Cuban economist Omar Everleny.

He added that the measures were riddled with caveats and bureaucracy.

"Both advertisements were full of words like

'exceptions, control, conditions',

as if they did not understand the seriousness of the crisis."

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A foreign businesswoman involved in Cuban trade told Reuters on condition of anonymity that investors would remain wary of any deal involving trade in local currency or debt.

He indicated that the measures indicated that the Government

"refused to leave a failed model."

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2022-08-17

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