Cuba will not hinder measures announced by the United States

HAVANA, Cub, May 28 (ACN) “Cuba will not hinder the measures announced by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to favor our private sector, even though they are limited and do not benefit the whole society,” said Johana Tablada, deputy director general of the U.S. division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX).

“These measures, announced two years ago by President Biden, neither affect the U.S. blockade nor modify the extreme regulations issued against Cuba; they just go on to show that the U.S. government is trying to tailor its actions to a fictional view of the island’s reality rather than to that reality, and its setting our private sector aside,” she added.

The diplomat stressed that the U.S. is unaware that both Cuba’s private sector or non-state form of management—approved by the government in consultation with the population, as per the 2019 Constitution—and the public sector are part of a single national business structure.

She also remarked that it will be very difficult to implement some of the announced measures, given that implications that the U.S. chose to keep Cuba included on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

“Cuba is studying these measures, and our government's decision remains firm: if they do not violate our laws and become a real opportunity or an opening for our people and bring benefits to them, or even a specific part of them, the Cuban government will not put obstacles in their path,” the official pointed out.

On May 28, OFAC reported announced that it is “authorizing independent private sector entrepreneurs who are Cuban nationals to open, maintain, and remotely use U.S. bank accounts, including through online payment platforms, to conduct authorized or exempt transactions” and that it seeks to “promote Internet freedom in Cuba, support independent Cuban private sector entrepreneurs, and expand access to certain financial services for the Cuban people”.

However, Cuba remains on the list of State sponsors of terrorism, which limits financial transactions with international banks and hinders the arrival of shipping companies to Cuban ports, and the U.S. government intensifies the unilateral coercive and interfering provisions of the blockade.