Cuba’s Foreign Trade Takes Big Dip

HAVANA TIMES, Nov. 3 – Cuba’s foreign trade registered a 36 per cent drop in the first nine months of this year, affirmed Minister of Foreign Trade Rodrigo Malmierca.

“Obstacles to international financing, the drop in demand and the prices of the principal export products, and the increase of priority imports such as food,” were cited by the minister as restraints for the national economy, reported IPS.

The decline is the sharpest since the early 90s when Cuba was jolted by the loss of its main trade partners, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Igor Montero, president of Cuba’s state-run Alimport Food Import Company, said that as part of the decline, cash only purchases from the United States -allowed despite Washington’s blockade- have dropped by 37 percent this year.