Business & Economy

Cuba began the experimental application of irrigation with central pivot in rice cultivation, a technique that would imply saving more than 60 per cent water, in addition to using less seeds, specialists from the Rice Agro-Industrial Group and the Grain Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture announced. That experience has been successfully used in countries such as Brazil, Panama and Spain. Rice is a basic dish in the diet of Cuban families.

Venezuela’s programme for the general care of diabetic patients will start applying the Cuban medicine Heberprot-P, of proven effectiveness in the cure of diabetic foot ulcers, the local press reported. That medicine, which has already benefitted more than 18,000 patients on the island, was created by the Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Centre (CIGB).

A guide for self employed workers and small businesses is for sale at newsstands in Cuba as of Monday. The pamphlet details the tax scheme for those who lose their jobs in the public sector layoffs taking place on the island and seek an alternative in what will become a larger private sector.

Cuba expects to obtain new cacao harvests in five years as a result of the planting of new plantations in the Guamuhaya Mountains, in the central province of Cienfuegos, by farmer women from one of the area’s co-ops, said Raúl Chaviano, assistant director of the Eladio Machín Agricultural Industrial Company.

Representatives of the Cuban opposition described as neoliberal the economic reforms announced by the island’s government, which include the laying off of half a million state workers. “The combination of massive layoffs with the way in which self-employment is being reintroduced and with a new foreign capital project, hidden from Cuban citizens, is the opening to the late, harsh and primary neoliberalism,” states the document presented in this capital by Manuel Cuesta Morúa, of the Arco Progresista social democratic coalition.

The Havana Club Company expects a recovery in its exports this year to reach the 3.6 million boxes of rum sold on the international market, after a three per cent decline in 2009 due to the economic crisis, said Marc Beuve-Mery, director of the association between Cuba Ron S.A. and the French group Pernod Ricard.

Cuba surpassed for the seventh consecutive year the figure of two million tourists, on this occasion 12 days before as compared to 2009, according to a Ministry of Tourism communiqué. This figure represents a three per cent growth in this sector, considered last decade as the locomotive of the Cuban economy.

The Cuban scientific community is seeking new varieties of agricultural products resistant to extreme conditions such as intense droughts and hurricanes, which could become more frequent due to climate change, Sergio Rodríguez, director of the National Institute of Research on Tropical Tubers, affirmed. According to the specialist, that institution has a world-renowned germ plasm bank

Baracoa, the first city founded in Cuba by the Spanish colonizers, has recovered 90.4 per cent of the homes affected by Hurricane Ike and the March 2008 coastal flooding, Alicia Licet Noa, director of the Housing Investment Municipal Unit, announced. The hurricanes that hit the country two years ago damaged more than 300,000 homes throughout the Caribbean island nation.