CUBA-BRAZIL: Good Friends Do Good Business

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Sep 27 2003 (IPS) - Cuban and Brazilian companies signed six business deals in Havana Saturday during the visit of Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, which President Fidel Castro described as ”the best visit we’ve had in a long time.”

The business agreements involve the areas of biotechnology, tourism, fuel alcohol production, finance and transport services, and represent a potential volume of trade amounting to some 200 million dollars, according to a Brazilian foreign trade official.

Castro sported a sober dark blue suit Saturday at the inauguration of the business seminar in which the deals were signed. But he met Lula at the airport Friday in his trademark fatigues.

At the Brazil-Cuba business forum, some 50 entrepreneurs who formed part of Lula’s delegation exchanged information with Cuban representatives and explored possibilities for investment in this Caribbean island nation of 11.2 million.

”Everything for us is a surprise. The only thing we knew yesterday was that there was an excellent meeting between Brazilian businessmen and Cubans,” not that we would be addressing the gathering, Castro said at the start of an improvised speech that lasted over half an hour.

In his own address, which was brief, Lula ”congratulated Cubans and Brazilians for the felicitous initiative” of holding a seminar on prospects for trade and investment in Cuba.

The Brazilian leader said that in a globalised world like today’s, what are needed are ”bold” trade policies, as well as the capacity to bring together sectors that complement each other to create the conditions that make it possible to ”compete in equality” with the most technologically, economically and industrially developed countries.

”I hope that what comes out of this seminar are much stronger ties between Brazil and Cuba than the ones we already have,” said Lula, a former trade unionist and the head of Brazil’s leftist Workers’ Party.

Castro praised ”the enormous pragmatism” and ”great natural intelligence” of his old friend Lula, as well as the enormous economic and technological potential and natural resources of Brazil, which he said had the conditions to become ”an industrial power.”

After saying that Brazil’s potential provided ”hope” not only for Cuba, but for other peoples of Latin America and the world, the 76-year-old Cuban leader noted that his own country is small and lacking in natural resources, and must thus cultivate know-how and intelligence, referring to a series of educational programmes launched in this socialist island nation.

On his second and last day in Cuba, which he had visited a number of times in the past as a political and labour leader, Lula chatted with young Brazilians studying medicine thanks to scholarships granted by the Cuban government.

Shortly before heading back to Brazil, he also met with Roman Catholic Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who informed him of the situation of the Church in Cuba, according to media representatives accompanying the presidential retinue.

However, Lula did not meet with dissidents and the wives of imprisoned opposition leaders serving lengthy sentences handed down in March, who had requested a meeting.

Castro accompanied his guest to a ceremony in which a floral wreath was placed at the monument to Cuban independence hero José Martí in the Plaza de la Revolución.

In the afternoon, the two leaders continued their private conversations, for which they had no set agenda, and part of which took place as they drove across the city.

At the end of a first official meeting between the two heads of state on Friday evening, Castro and Lula presided over the signing of 12 agreements and memoranda of understanding aimed at bolstering Cuban-Brazilian trade ties and cooperation.

A framework accord expressed ”the will of both governments to expand the mechanism” for cancelling the debt that Cuba owes Brazil.

Under the agreement, signed by Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and the head of Cuba’s Central Bank, Francisco Soberón, part of Cuba’s exports to Brazil will be paid for by writing off debt.

But contrary to earlier reports coming out of Brazil, the list of agreements did not include a 400 million-dollar credit line for Cuba.

When asked by foreign reporters about the supposed loan arrangement, Brazilian and Cuban officials stated tersely that no such thing existed, or that they knew nothing about it.

Trade relations and cooperation between Cuba and Brazil encompass sectors like fishing, health – including technology transfer – education, the environment and tourism.

The main focus of Lula’s visit to Cuba was to strengthen trade ties between the two countries. His retinue included the ministers of foreign relations (Amorim), health (Humberto Costa), fisheries (José Fritsch), development (Luiz Fernando Furlan), food security (José Graziano) and finance (Antonio Palocci).

Castro saw his guest off at the airport on Saturday afternoon.