CUBA-US: Putting Business above Discrepancies

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Sep 25 2002 (IPS) - Representatives of nearly 300 companies from the United States set aside their political differences with Cuba’s socialist government to attend the first U.S. food and agribusiness trade show that opens Thursday in the Cuban capital, keen on bringing home contracts for sales of food.

On display at the trade fair are the first U.S. livestock sold to Cuba in four decades, including a pair of buffalo calves, and a couple of pigs, whose meat is a favourite among Cubans, as well as a wide range of products with brandnames that have not been seen in Cuba in over forty years of hostility between the two countries.

Some 1,500 U.S. products from 33 states, the District of Columbia, and the free associate state of Puerto Rico will remain on exhibit through Sunday in the Pabexpo exhibition centre next to Havana’s Palace of Conventions.

The trade fair, in which 288 U.S. companies are taking part, will be attended by 750 representatives from that country, including the governor of the midwest state of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, three lawmakers, and nine other senior state officials.

Ventura, the third U.S. governor to visit Cuba in the past four decades, said on his arrival Wednesday that this is a good time for doing business.

The fair organisers reported that more than 30 businesses and 100 visitors had also come in from the southeastern state of Florida, which is home to the largest Cuban exile community.

The fair will open to the public on Sunday, the last day, but only by invitation. “Otherwise there would be no way to accomodate the enormous number of people who would show up,” said the president of the state-run Cuban import firm Alimport, Pedro Alvarez.

Alimport has handled the shipments of food that have been arriving from the United States since November, after U.S. President George W. Bush offered humanitarian aid to ease the damages caused by hurricane Michelle on Nov 4, 2001.

Although the government of Fidel Castro turned down that offer, it did agree to what was to be a one-off purchase of foods and medicines from U.S. companies, to deal with the emergency caused by the storm, which cost the island 1.8 billion dollars in material losses.

But the sales have continued, and around 140 million dollars worth of beans, chickens, corn, rice, wheat, apples, onions, turkey, peas and eggs will have arrived by the end of the month – a total that could be doubled by the first few months of 2003 thanks to the new contracts that should be signed during the trade show.

“Our food imports, which currently amount to about one billion dollars a year, will increase, and 70 percent of that could come from the United States,” Alvarez told the press on Tuesday.

He added that “for U.S. companies, it is important to recuperate” a market “that is practically in their own backyard.”

“The immense majority of the people and businesses from the United States are in favour of normal relations” between the two countries, he added.

The food sales have caused concern to companies from other countries that do business with Cuba, which fear the loss of market share in this Caribbean island nation of 11 million.

But Alvarez said, in a conciliatory tone, that “We will not turn our back on any of our friends.”

Government sources have also pointed out that not all products from the United States are competitive here, and that 30 percent of the imports would still come from other countries.

The embargo slapped on Cuba by the United States in the early 1960s bans all trade with this country. But an amendment passed in 2000 loosened the blockade, permitting cash-only sales of food and medicine.

However, Cuban exports to the United States are still banned.

A growing number of U.S. lawmakers as well as business interests from farm-states are pushing for a relaxation or lifting of the embargo.

Several amendments have been incorporated in the Department of the Treasury and Postal Service budget law, including an end to the restrictions that keep U.S. citizens from travelling to Cuba without special permission.

A lifting of the travel ban would mean a major boost in tourism revenues – one of Cuba’s main sources of foreign exchange, alongside sugar and expatriate remittances – and an immediate expansion of the country’s importing capacity.

A report that Cuba presented in the United Nations states that the U.S. administration’s lack of objection to sales of a limited amount of food to this country cannot be interpreted as “a flexibilisation of its policy of hostility” towards the Cuban people.

In mid-November, the United Nations general assembly will debate a draft resolution on the need to lift the U.S. embargo against Cuba.