Foreign Companies Still See Opportunities in Cuba
Despite Non-Payments
HAVANA TIMES – Hall 10 of the ExpoCuba fairgrounds was full of Chinese companies—most of them exporters of goods from the Asian country to Cuba for decades, and also owed millions of dollars by Cuban entities, with debts pending for more than five years.
This scenario was evident during the 41st edition of the Havana International Fair (Fihav 2025), which began on Monday the 24th, runs until Saturday the 29th, and has brought together businesspeople and delegations from 52 countries, with the goal of promoting business and foreign investment in this Caribbean island nation.
“Here there are businesspeople to whom we owe money, with whom we have not been able to meet all our commitments, and yet they are in Cuba,” Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel said on the opening day.
The president emphasized that, despite those debts, these are businesspeople who “continue to trust in Cuba,” with “a sense of commitment” and the hope of better times ahead.
“Many of these businesspeople have been in Cuba for decades, they have bet on Cuba, they have made part of their lives and also part of their business results in Cuba, and that stands above other things,” he added.
Since the triumph of its revolution in 1959, Cuba has been governed by a socialist system with a centralized economy, which remained unchanged until the crisis of the 1990s forced the government to open up to foreign investment, allow small private businesses, and promote greater autonomy for state enterprises.
Currently, the economy—mired in a deep crisis—remains largely state-controlled, although in recent years there has been growing space for private participation, with a stronger presence in sectors such as commerce and technology, among others.
The state-owned company China Auto Caiec, from the Asian giant, began selling power generators in Cuba in 1995, and today distributes automobiles, trucks, agricultural machinery, raw materials, food, fertilizers, and many other goods.
Its representative in Cuba, Wu Han, told IPS that their main client used to be state industry, but that now they no longer do much business with the state and instead work more with the private sector.
This is because the state’s ability to pay is minimal, and his company—like other Chinese firms—usually demands advance payments from Cuban entities.
Currently, goods are not unloaded at the port until payment is made, with only a few exceptions. A decade ago, Chinese companies allowed payment terms of between 360 and 720 days.
But the Cuban state gradually lost its economic solvency and, as a result, owes China Auto Caiec about 200 million dollars, which have accumulated since 2015, Wu explained.
“We’re facing serious hardship, and we are looking for solutions. We also do not want to abandon state enterprises; it has been many years of cooperation. Cuba is now going through a complicated situation, but we don’t want to apply pressure,” he said.
The Chinese representative admitted that one of the reasons his company maintains a commercial office in Havana is, in part, because they still hope to recover the debt someday— and because “the Cuban market is special in the world.”
“The situation here is different from other countries. They don’t have the capacity to produce many things, and everything has to be brought from abroad, almost always from China. And now the MSMEs (micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises) are buying many things. It’s an opportunity for all foreign firms,” he added.
The Private-Sector Niche
Two other Chinese companies in Cuba—Zhaoke (present on the island since 2004) and Liaoning Mec Group (since 1998)—are in a similar situation to China Auto Caiec: the state owes them about 40 million and 58 million dollars, respectively.
The difference is that, because these two distributors of a wide variety of goods are private firms, they do not receive the subsidies that Beijing sometimes grants its state-owned enterprises to promote bilateral economic cooperation, according to Layda García, a sales agent who has worked at Zhaoke since 2014.
When García began working at the company, it was a more prosperous time. In one year, they even billed 23 million dollars, whereas in recent years—amid the deterioration of Cuba’s national industries, once their main clients—their operations here have struggled to reach one million dollars in revenue.
“So many years working in Cuba also creates a strong sense of belonging,” Garcia said, as a reason why Jiliang Huang, the company’s president, decided to remain in Cuba despite the adversities.
Zhaoke and Liaoning Mec Group, like many other foreign companies, have chosen to adapt to the new realities of the Cuban market and carve out a niche within the growing, though uncertain, private sector.
On Tuesday the 25th, at the Fihav 2025 Investment Forum, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment Oscar Pérez-Oliva said that the government is working on “the creation of a regulatory framework for the establishment of foreign investment in partnership with the private sector.”
Currently, foreign companies cannot invest directly in private businesses without state mediation, nor can they create joint ventures or other forms of partnership.
Private entrepreneurs have demanded this for years, but the demand has been sidelined despite the growing weight of private forms of management in the Cuban economy.
Since the government allowed the creation of micro, small and medium private businesses in 2021, about 11,000 were approved through 2024, of which more than 9,000 are currently operating.
The vast majority are private and have become so relevant in the Cuban business system that they now account for 55% of retail sales in Cuban pesos, surpassing state commercial networks for the first time.
Of the 715 companies participating in Fihav 2025, 268 are Cuban, including 61 private companies.
The current edition of the fair introduces areas dedicated to exportable products from all provinces, renewable energy projects, artificial intelligence applications, tourism promotion, and economic integration through forums with several regional mechanisms.
A New Opening
At the Investment Forum, Perez-Oliva announced that in 2025, 32 new business ventures from 13 countries have been approved, with committed capital of 1.1 billion dollars. Of those 32, 10 used new, simpler, and faster procedures managed directly by heads of state agencies.
In this direction, the government announced the issuance of a new decree that will replace the existing legal framework for foreign investment on the island, aiming to offer greater flexibility to processes and new guarantees to investors and joint ventures between state and foreign entities.
The changes, for example, will allow companies to establish bank accounts abroad—without the need for operations to pass through Cuban banks—in order to circumvent the United States’ unilateral economic sanctions on the island.
Likewise, foreign companies established in Cuba will have greater autonomy and will be able to decide on matters such as hiring their human resources, even though this still takes place through a state employment agency. Until now, that agency had the final say on personnel decisions.
Furthermore, any form of foreign investment may sell its products and services wholesale to any national economic actor with the ability to pay, without “any type of restriction… there is no obstacle, nothing that prohibits it,” Perez-Oliva said.
“The challenge at this moment is to ensure that this business fabric comes together naturally and that all economic actors participate and contribute to achieving the economic development goals of our country. That is a premise we must not lose sight of,” he added.
First published in Spanish by IPS and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.