CUBA INVESTMENTS: Cuba Golf

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11/17/2015

CUBA SEEKS ANOTHER $8.2BILLION CUBAN INVESTMENTS

HAVANA CUBA INVESTMENT IN TOURISM TOPS $2 BILLION

CUBA INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES TODAY!

Havana Cuba- The Cuban government is once again asking Investors for over $8.2 billion in foreign investment in 326 pre-approved projects ranging from the production of Cuban rum to an entirely new venture creating high definition, pay-per-view television.

Cuba's Foreign Trade Minister Rodrigo Malmierca opened the ready-made investment opportunities, officially called the "Cuban Investment Portfolio", at the 33rd annual Havana International Fair (FIHAV).

Forty of the 246 projects advertised on last year's Cuban wish list are in "advanced negotiations" and have been removed from this year's portfolio, Malmierca said.

This year's catalog has 80 more defined Cuban Investment projects than last year's, but the total value is $500 million less.

CUBAN TOURISM $2BILLION IN CASH

The projects form part of Cuba's attempt to bring in another $2 billion in foreign direct investment a year. The Cuban Investment Minister reported Cuba has signed 36 deals since a new foreign investment law was approved last year, including six at the special development zone around the port of Mariel, but did not say how much they were worth.

While most of the newly signed projects are joint ventures with the Cuban state, an unspecified number were financed with 100 percent foreign capital, Malmierca also promoted Communist Cuba's small but growing private sector in an effort to show the country was modernizing.

"We realize, I repeat, that the private sector, cooperatives, and other forms of property and management, have a space within our future development model," The portfolio includes new opportunities in healthcare, tourism, transportation, construction, agriculture and renewable energy.

Also added to the list were two projects to make and distribute rum, one of Cuba's signature products.

One is a $27 million joint venture for the obscure Perla del Norte brand for export and national consumption. The other is a similar $44 million joint venture for the more common Cuban brand.

There's also a $6 million project for installing high-definition paid television channels on the national broadcaster.

Five high-end Cuban Travel hotels and Cuban Beach villa construction joint ventures and 59 lodging management contracts are available, as well as the construction or expansion of seven marinas.

Cuba once relied heavily on trade with the Soviet bloc, which later collapsed. Even though Cuba trades with 75 countries and trade has tripled in the last decade, it relies heavily on socialist ally Venezuela, which is struggling with an economic crisis.
http://Calls2Cuba.com

1/30/2012

CUBA SELLS REAL ESTATE

Cuba Real Estate For Sale In Havana

CUBA PROPERTY FOR SALE AFTER 50 YEARS
Cuba announced Thursday it will allow real estate to be bought and sold for the first time since the early days of the revolution, the most important reform yet in a series of free-market changes under President Raul Castro.
The law, which takes effect Nov. 10, applies to citizens living in Cuba and permanent residents only, according to a red-letter headline on the front page of Thursday's Communist Party daily Granma and details published in the government's Official Gazette.
The law limits Cubans to owning one home in the city and another in the country, an effort to prevent the accumulation of large real estate holdings. It requires that all real estate transactions be made through Cuban bank accounts so that they can be better regulated, and says the transactions will be subject to bank commissions.
Sales will also be subject to an eight per cent tax on the assessed value of the property, paid equally by buyer and seller. In the case where Cubans exchange homes of equal value in a barter agreement, each side will pay four per cent of the value of their home.
"This is a very big step forward. With this action the state is granting property rights that didn't exist before," said Philip J. Peters, a Cuba analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia. "If you think about it from the point of view of a Cuban family, it converts their house from a place to live into a source of wealth or a source of collateral. It's an asset that can now be made liquid."
While the Gazette was available online, few Cubans have access to the Internet and most were waiting for the booklet to go on sale at kiosks around the country. A handwritten sign posted at Havana's main distribution center Thursday advised that the law booklet was not yet on sale.
On the streets of Havana, residents said they were thrilled by the news but anxious to see the fine print.
"This is going to help me because I have some money and now I will be able to buy a better house," said Oscar Palacios Delgado, a 68-year-old office maintenance worker, adding he hoped the government would enact other changes to make it easier for Cubans to find building materials for home repairs. "This law will benefit many Cubans."
Cuban exiles will not be allowed to purchase property on the island since they are not residents. Still, they will be able to send money to help relatives buy new homes, and there was speculation some might try to buy homes themselves through frontmen, something the government would likely try to prevent.
The change follows October's legalization of buying and selling cars, though with restrictions that still make it hard for ordinary Cubans to buy new vehicles.
Castro has also allowed citizens to go into business for themselves in a number of approved jobs -- everything from party clowns to food vendors to accountants -- and has pledged to streamline the state-dominated economy by eliminating half a million government workers.
Cuba's government employs more than 80 per cent of the workers in the island's command economy, paying wages of just $20 US a month in return for free education and health care, and nearly free housing, transportation and basic foods. Castro has said repeatedly that the system is not working since taking over from his brother Fidel in 2008, but he has vowed that Cuba will remain a socialist state.

English: Fidel CASTRO in front of monument of ...

Image via Wikipedia

Cubans have long bemoaned the ban on property sales, which took effect in stages over the first years after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. In an effort to fight absentee ownership by wealthy landlords, Fidel enacted a reform that gave title to whoever lived in a home. Most who left the island forfeited their properties to the state. Since no property market was allowed, the rules have meant that for decades Cubans could only exchange property through complicated barter arrangements, or through even murkier black-market deals where thousands of dollars change hands under the table, with no legal recourse if transactions go bad.
Some Cubans entered into sham marriages to make deed transfers easier. Others made deals to move into homes ostensibly to care for an elderly person living there, only to inherit the property when the person died.
Cubans will also now be allowed to inherit property from relatives without having to live in it first, and they will be able to take title of property of relatives or others who emigrate. Previously, such properties could be seized by the state.

http://Calls2Cuba.com

2/22/2011

GOLF IN CUBA

Image via WikipediaCUBA GOLF

With an easing of the Castro regime's draconian policies on any activity viewed as bourgeois and an increasing thirst for tourist dollars, the Republic of Cuba is in the process of welcoming back golf.

At one time the most populous - now with 11 million residents - Caribbean island nation boasted a dozen or more golf courses. But when Fidel Castro took power in 1959, all but 27 holes were usurped for uses other than the playing of the Royal & Ancient Game.

But that may be changing, thanks to foreign investment in several golf-related developments. "Golf is becoming a reality in Cuba this year," Andrew MacDonald, chief executive of London-based Esencia Hotels and Resorts, told CNN (for the full report, visit http://www.cnn.com/2011/SPORT/golf/02/21/cuba.golf.revolution.castro/).

"The key moment was a change in Cuban property law last August to make foreign ownership far more attractive. The Cuban government has a vision of establishing 15-16 new golf courses in the next five to seven years."

According to reporter Will Tidey in the CNN report, MacDonald's firm is close to breaking ground on Carbonera Country Club, part of a $300 million project in a resort area called Varadero, which already has the 18-hole Varadero Golf Club (the other Cuban course is the rundown, nine-hole Havana Golf Club).

A Cuban investment group based in Vancouver, B.C., Leisure Canada, has three projects in the works in the Pinar del Rio province on Cuba's west coast, and a London firm called Foster and Partners told CNN it has been hired by a Spanish developer to build a 2,000-unit community with three courses in the same area.

Tourist minister Manuel Marrero confirmed that in 2010 the Council of Ministers approved 16 golf developments, saying that the sport was important to the country's plans to increase tourism.

Canadian golf architect Les Furber oversaw a $20 million expansion - financed by the Cuban government - of Varadero GC in 1998. He told Tidey that that project was made more arduous because of the American embargo which has been in place since 1962.

"Because of the U.S. embargo on products and services it was challenging to get many of the things we needed, and the economic time meant it took eight years to build the golf course due to the lack of diesel fuel, tires and batteries etc," Furber said.

Despite such difficulties, Furber is one member of the international golf community who believes Cuba has a bright future as a tourist destination, particularly for North Americans. "Cuba is 90 miles from Miami and has a great climate, coastal frontage for development and needs golf to support the tourism demands," he told Tidey.

"Cuba recognizes now that it does not have any financial support from foreign countries and needs tourism in a big way to help pay for its imports and lines of credit for most things it does not produce or manufacture," Furber added.

Though there are skeptics - Havana GC's pro Johan Vega told Tidey: "When the new ones open show them to me . . . then I will know it is true" - outsiders such as MacDonald express more confidence.

"Golf just wasn't a priority in Cuba before and now it is," MacDonald said. "We hope that in years to come emerging young players will have the chance to develop and compete on an international level. Cuba is known for its baseball players, and when you think about it the golf swing is not a million miles away from that used in baseball."

Also a factor in the spurt in Cuba's golf development is the introduction of golf as an Olympic sport for the 2016 games in Brazil. "It is important that support is given to many people in Cuba to play, practice and participate in golf," Spanish touring pro Alvaro Quiros said after a 2010 appearance at Varadero GC.

"Golf will be an Olympic event in 2016. Cuba should seriously look at and prepare for golf as they have done with other sports - baseball, boxing, track and field," added the long-hitting four-time winner on the European Tour.

While the embargo has severely limited travel by Americans to Cuba, 10 million U.S. citizens are allowed to visit the country because of their Cuban lineage.

But MacDonald sees that restriction changing, albeit gradually. "I see that coming in softly over the next few years," he told Tidey.
More Golf in Cuba

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