Business & Economy

Cuba’s Gross Domestic Product will grow 1.9 in 2010, according to the state budget law approved by the National Assembly of People’s Power (parliament). According to official data, the island’s economy grew 1.4 per cent in 2009.

Cuba’s Minister of Economy Marino Murillo announced in his speech to the Cuban parliament a reduction in “social spending since the economy can not withstand its substantial amounts.” “Experiments are being carried out and work is going on in others to lighten the burden for the state in some services provided.”

The US government levied a huge fine of US $536 million on Credit Suisse Bank for carrying out transactions that violate the US embargoes against Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba.

Cuban authorities hope to complete a reduced housing construction plan by the end of the year. At the end of November, 29,703 houses were completed of the programmed 32,000. Cuba suffers from a prolonged housing shortage especially in the capital. Before three hurricanes caused severe devastation in the second half of 2008, the new housing construction goal had been 100,000 per year.

International cooperation is supporting more than 60 production projects of the non-governmental National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), announced Mario La O Sosa, head of the International Relations and Cooperation Projects Department of that organization. According to the official, that backing “has allowed for the implementation of irrigation systems, the repair of machinery and technological transfer.

The US Congress approved the lifting of restrictions imposed in 2005 by the George W. Bush administration on food sales to Cuba, reported the press in Washington. This measure will allow the island to again pay in cash while the merchandise is being transported and not through third country banks before the shipment of products.

Cuba and Venezuela signed 285 collaboration projects worth US $3.18 billion, it was announced today during the tenth Joint Commission between the two nations, being held in Havana prior to the December 13-14 summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).

Cuba’s gross domestic product (GDP) will grow one per cent in 2009, affirmed the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in its preliminary report on the economies of the region, presented in Santiago, Chile.

Cuba will introduce new scientific applications in the cultivation of rice with the collaboration of specialists from Japan, China and Vietnam, in a program for the production of that cereal until 2013 and which should reduce the island’s dependence on imports.