Business & Economy

The Ministry of Finances and Prices of Cuba announced an increase in the price of the fuel sold at the island’s service stations due to the 25 per cent rise in the price of oil on the international market and the forecasted further hike in the coming months.

The Cuban authorities hope to incorporate by November some 2,000 soldiers to the recovery of the island’s railroad tracks, in an attempt to give a boost to this sector’s development program planned through 2013. The current state of railways in Cuba is critical.

Thousands of meetings are being held this week in Cuba in workplaces and barrios with the aim of explaining the laying off of half a million persons from the state sector, announced Salvador Valdés, general secretary of the Central Organization of Cuban Trade Unions (CTC), the only authorized union organization in the island. Valdes said: “The process will be wide ranging, with the most absolute freedom of opinions, with sincerity in the presentations and with respect for the dissenting opinions that may exist.”

Fifty-four per cent of the land handed over in usufruct in Cuba since September 2008 is still unproductive, Pedro Olivera, director of the National Land Control Centre, said. Specialists in agricultural matters point out that the process has confronted bureaucratic obstacles, despite the government’s interest in reducing food imports, which amount to two billion dollars a year.

Brazil is willing to help Cuba in the development of small and medium-sized businesses, capable of assuming the half million persons who will be jobless in the state sector in the coming months, Celso Amorim, that South American country’s foreign minister, affirmed. Last Saturday he met with President Raúl Castro.

The Cuban government will include the use of water among the economic planning indicators with the aim of encouraging the rational use of this resource in the agricultural and industrial sector and by the population, Minister of Agriculture Gustavo Rodríguez Rollero announced. The island has been affected in recent years by long droughts that have decreased its water reserves.

Yadira Garcia, 54, one of the highest ranking female cabinet members of the government of Raul Castro, was removed from her post as Minister of Basic Industries, informed the local press on Monday.

U.S. journalist Edward Schumacher-Matos, from The Washington Post, recommended today to the Barack Obama administration that it unilaterally lift the embargo on Cuba to avoid a new migration wave due to the economic crisis the island is going through.

The ruling Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) asked the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR), the largest mass organization in the island, to explain to citizens the changes in the economic model and especially the laying off and relocation of half a million persons employed in the state sector.