By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Jul 6 2001 (IPS)

The more than two million people living in the Cuban capital suffer the consequences of a crisis that has reigned in this island nation since the early 1990s despite the reanimation of some economic indicators.

The gross domestic product (GDP) is growing, construction in the tourism sector is on the rise, more foreign visitors are touring the streets of Havana, there are fewer power outages – a daily occurrence a decade ago – and telephone and natural gas services have been expanded.

But at the same time, travel by ‘guagua’ (the local term for bus) continues to be a veritable nightmare, the housing situation remains problematic and most of the population is unable to make ends meet with their monthly earnings.

“It isn’t easy,” a phrase that became widely used in this socialist-run country in the 1990s as a description of most aspects of daily life, still holds true.

More than 77 percent of Havana’s families report that “income is not enough to cover expenses,” according to a survey on the economic situation of households in the capital conducted in 2000 by the city’s Territorial Office of Statistics.

The study revealed that 53.4 percent of the households polled had a per-person income of 50 to 150 pesos (at an exchange of 20 Cuban pesos per dollar), and that 59.3 percent receive some quantity of dollars through other means.

Nearly 60 percent of the homes visited during the survey presented construction problems, 98.3 percent had potable water infrastructure, but just 49.8 percent received water on a daily basis. Of the families polled, 90.1 percent owned electric fans and 87.5 had refrigerators.

More precise details about the social and economic situation in Havana, and in the rest of the country, will be known next year when the government performs a national population and housing census, which, say experts, was originally slated for the early 1990s.

“Households in the capital receive good social attention. They are guaranteed public services, including health and education. But income (does not guarantee) a balanced diet,” pointed out economist Omar Everleny.

However, in his study “City of Havana: Economic Performance and Social Situation,” published recently by the Cuban Centre for Economic Research, Everleny asserts that the capital “shows signs of a sustained recovery.”

Havana is responsible for 43 percent of the country’s GDP at 1996 prices. Commercial production, merchandise sales and tax revenues are three areas that expanded, according to the report.

The average annual rise in income from the tourism sector in Havana has been 24.7 percent since 1994, reaching 529.7 million dollars in 2000. Of the 1.7 million tourists who visited the island last year, 947,216 (54.2 percent) spent significant time in the capital.

Despite these positive signs, Everleny said, Havana has proven unable to improve the indicators in some economic areas – including standard of living – since 1989, prior to the onset of the crisis.

Economists here generally attribute Cuba’s difficult decade to the combination of effects of the United States embargo against the island and the loss of trade partners in the now-defunct European socialist bloc, and to mistakes made in managing the economy.

The GDP plummeted 34.8 percent from 1990 to 1993, dealing a heavy blow to Havana, which “sank into a deep crisis,” said Everleny.

“Workers’ salaries in 2000 were higher than they were in 1989, but only in nominal terms, because the purchasing power of those wages was far less” than it was prior to the crisis, said the economist.

Official figures cited in Everleny’s study indicate that unemployment in the capital fell from 8.8 percent in 1996 to 4.7 percent in 2000, below the national average of around five percent.

In early 2001, the Provincial Board of Work and Social Security reported that it was monitoring 24,719 people who were self- employed, a sum that does not include 4,560 people working in the private sector in transportation and 3,614 people who made a living from housing rentals.

Regarding the “difficult situation in housing,” Everleny explained that the pace of construction doubled in 2000 compared to 1994, but he pointed out that this “is still insufficient for mitigating the setbacks of previous years and for meeting the needs of the population.”

At the national level, construction surpassed the total 39,941 houses built in 1989, but it was a different story in the capital. Official figures indicate that 4,831 homes were built in Havana in 2000, compared to 5,795 in 1989.

The National Office of Statistics reports that 20 percent of Cuba’s more than 11.1 million inhabitants reside in the capital, with 3,008 people per square kilometre.

Population growth of the capital has been reduced in the last four years as a result of the 1997 law to control internal migration.

Emigration abroad is also believed to have contributed to slowing demographic growth in Havana.

Cuba’s economic crisis and the desire to be reunited with family are the reasons most often cited in the decision to emigrate, outstripping political reasons, according to surveys of people who emigrate or who plan to leave the country.

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