Cuba strives to increase exports

HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 3 (ACN) The survey of Cuba’s potential to export goods and services is one of the actions contribute to the inflow of foreign currency, Vivian Herrera Cid, director general of Foreign Trade of that Ministry (MINCEX), told Granma newspaper today.

In August 2020, Cuba approved regulations that opened the doors for foreign trade to the non-state sector and diversified the goods and services to be exported. Since then, 863 contracts worth 22 million dollars have been signed, but only 42 of them involve exports; 821 were about imports.

Herrera Cid explained that the Cuban economy has a high importing vocation, and the non-state forms of management are not the exception. The technological obsolescence of the country's industries, business immobility and the excess of regulations are the causes of the decrease in exports, she said, a trend that must be reversed to the extent that the national industry can meet the growing demand of all economic actors.

She pointed out that foreign trade companies have the experience to make the processes viable and even make operations cheaper, since Cuba is a signatory of several trade agreements with tariff benefits.

Official figures have it that up to the first half of January 2021, 4,450 private businesses had approached specialized companies, while 2,081 have the intention of establishing some kind of operation.

This process is also a challenge for state-owned companies—which are faced with other forms of labor and must undertake smaller-scale operations, but with greater immediacy— and it is already undoing knots, so we expect positive results sooner rather than later, Herrera Cid added.