CUBA INVESTMENTS: Raúl Castro

Showing posts with label Raúl Castro. Show all posts

11/13/2012

Cuba has once again opened its doors to foriegn investments due to the new vision of the younger Cuban President Raul Castro who took over command from his brother Fidel Castro just 3 years ago.

Cuba has expressed interest to allow investment in the Oil & Gas sectors in huge tracts of water off the shores of Havana and Varadero just 90 miles from Miami Florida.

Currently publicly traded Canadian company Sheritt International (S.TO) has invested over $500 Million in various sectors of the Cuban economy such as oil, beach hotels and tourism in Cuba.

Many foreign oil companies has been exploring offshore oil in Cuban waters but all have come up dry so far.

The current Oil and Energy solution comes to Cuba directly from Venezuela who's President, Hugo Chavez has been supporting Cuba in the same manner as Russia during the cold war years.

Cuba has been offering huge incentives to some of the worlds biggest oil companies such as Repsol from Spain, Petrobras from Brazil, OLV from India, Petronas from Malaysia and Norsk-Hydro from Norway.

Most of the oil drilling has been done by Oil drilling rigs imported and financed from China using non-American technology.

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7/26/2012

RAUL CASTRO WANTS AMERICAN INVESTMENT IN CUBA

Havana Cuba Investments in Real Estate & Hotel Resorts

CUBA CASTRO OFFERS NEW INVESTMENT TO AMERICAN INVESTORS

Havana, Cuba. Raul Castro President of Cuba said today that Cuba is ready to sit down and negotiate a peaceful fair solution with President Obhama of the USA. The Cuban investment offer to the USA was made by Cuban President Raul Castro as he stated once again that his government is ready to enter into talks with the United States bases on mutual respect and understanding.

Castro was quoted as saying "Cuba is ready for American Investment. If President Obama wants to discuss the problems of democracy, as they say, freedom of speech, human rights, the things they have invented for years, we will discuss them," he said. But he added that the Cuban government has its own grievances that also need to be discussed.

Raul Castro comments came on the 59th anniversary of the Cuban assault led by former Cuban president Fidel Castro on a military barracks that marked the beginning of the Cuban revolution back in 1959.

Cuba and Raul Castro in particular has expressed willingness to talk and negotiate with Washington. In April 2009 speaking at a summit of Latin American leaders gathered in Venezuela, he said he was willing to discuss "everything, everything, and everything" with the United States, even such sensitive topics as human rights, freedom of the press and political prisoners.

Cubans were given a holiday from work Thursday, and the July 26 event has historically been reserved for important announcements. Castro speech was broadcast several times on Cuba's state-controlled media companies.

Castro comments were made as several off-the-cuff jokes and said he had not planned to give a speech about Cuba and American Investments.

Cuban First Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura had already given the keynote address, in which he questioned whether the United States return the naval base near the Cuban town of Guantanamo, where this year's celebrations are taking place.

The USA has a 50 year old trade embargo on Cuba, and any Investment changes in US-Cuba business relations have been delayed by a number of risky financial protection and insurance issues, including the jailing of State Department contractor Alan Gross on charges of espionage in Cuba.

After Cuban Vice-President Machado Ventura's speech, President Raul Castro took the stage to thank the huge Cuban crowd. But he said he had made several speeches this week and would not be making formal comments.

Then he jumped into the long debated and strained U.S.-Cuba relations, saying he would prefer the two countries were adversaries only on the baseball field especially when it came to Hotel and resort Investments, real estate, mutual fund investments and any health care, travel and insurance investments that benefited Cuba and the foreign investors.

There was an olive branch for the Cuba's internal financial, tourism and investment critics, who Cuba's state-run media lambaste as paid mercenaries working in the employ of the American foreign government. "Factions" within Cuba, Castro said, "are trying to lay the groundwork so that one day what happened in Libya will happen here in Cuba, exactly like what they're trying to make happen in Syria."

This week leading Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya died in a mysterious car crash. The Cuban government officially stated the crash was the result of an unfortunate accident, but members of Paya's family have said they believe he was intentionally targeted for elimination for his opposition to the Cuban government human right s policy.

Foreign investors in Cuba are all anxiously awaiting the new investment opportunities to open as the next tourism and real estate season start later this year.

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.

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1/24/2012

CUBA NEW BUSINESS OPEN

English: HAVANA. President Putin with Fidel Ca...

Image via Wikipedia

BUSINESS IN CUBA
HAVANA, Cuba registered a slight increase in the number of foreign investment projects last year, the first rise since authorities began winnowing out foreign ventures they deemed ineffective or corrupt in 2003, according to a government report seen by Reuters on Monday.

The report by the Foreign Trade and Investment Ministry said the country was involved in 218 joint ventures, compared with 211 in 2008, and had 69 hotels under foreign management, up from 63 the previous year.

The increase was the first reported since 2002. After that Communist authorities began closing many of the 404 ventures and 313 cooperative production agreements then in existence, mainly with Western partners, alleging they did little for the economy and were often corrupt.

The report said there were currently just 14 cooperative production agreements, where an investor receives part of the profit or product produced, but holds no shares.

The increase in foreign investments came despite a severe financial crisis and just a year after President Raul Castro formally took over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro in 2008. But local economists said it was too early to say if the change was the result of a change in government policy.

Hurricanes, the international financial crisis, U.S. sanctions and a sluggish state-dominated economy left Cuba short billions of dollars in 2009.

Foreign Trade and Investment Minister Rodrigo Malmierca told the National Assembly in December that 46 of the investment agreements with foreign companies were abroad, many of them in Venezuela, China and Angola.

Cuba has pharmaceutical ventures in Iran, India, China, Brazil and other countries, works construction in Angola and Vietnam, operates a hotel in China, and is involved in numerous projects in Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chavez is a top ally.

Inside Cuba, Malmierca said joint ventures were predominantly with investors from Spain, Venezuela, Canada and Italy, in sectors such as tourism, oil exploration, communications and mining.

Details of many joint ventures were not disclosed, but official media reported during 2009 deals for two hotel projects with Qatar, a fishing venture and four oil exploration contracts with Russia, an electronics assembly plant with China, and a paper venture with a Spanish firm.

U.S. law -- long aimed at isolating Cuba -- bars American companies from investing on the island, though they may hold a minority stake in foreign firms with less than 50 percent of their operations in Cuba.

Since the collapse of its former benefactor, the Soviet Union, threw Cuba's economy into deep crisis in the early 1990s, Havana has allowed some foreign investment under strict government control.

Cuba opposes privatization on principle and views foreign investment as merely "complementary" to the state-run economy, with foreign investors adding technology, management skills, financing and markets. Joint ventures are with Cuban state partners that usually hold 50 percent or more shares at home and a minority stake abroad.http://Calls2Cuba.com

3/19/2011

CUBA PESO EQUALS US DOLLAR

Raul Castro, left, with has his arm around sec...

Image via WikipediaCUBA DEVALUES DOLLAR
Havana Cuba.
Cuba has devalued Cuba's currency two types of peso by about 8 per cent to equal the dollar and other foreign monies, hoping the currency devaluation will spur exports and local production as the government seeks to overhaul a moribund economy.
The announcement published in Cuba state newspapers says the hard-currency peso used mostly by tourists and foreign companies on the island will now be worth 62p, down from 67p. Each hard-currency peso is still worth 24 of the standard pesos with which most Cubans are paid in an unusual two-tiered currency system.
The move could be a boon for the island's crucial tourism industry by making trips more affordable and encourage more private investment. It will also increase the peso value of remittances sent from abroad, a key lifeline for many cash-strapped Cubans working for salaries of about £12 a month.
But it will also make foreign goods priced in dollars or other hard currencies more expensive for most Cubans. This, according to officials will encourage more local production, especially in the food sector.
Andrew Macdonald, CEO of Esencia Group, a British company that has been developing tourism and the renewable energy sector in Cuba for the last seven years, said: "this provides another competitive edge for the Cuban economy, making it an even more attractive tourist destination and making their exports better value".
The move coincides with Cuba embarking on a series of economic reforms aimed at opening up the country to more foreign investment and boosting private sector activity that had been strictly limited under communist rule.
A Communist Party congress in April is expected to endorse the wide-ranging reform plan proposed by President Raul Castro.
The reforms seek to have former state workers absorbed by the private sector, for state subsidies to be cut, for urban cooperatives to spring up, the welcoming of foreign capital, and for companies to operate autonomously.
The statement said that the country's economic woes, exacerbated by the effects of three monster hurricanes that struck in 2008 and the global financial crisis, had forced the bank to maintain an exchange rate that "did not correspond to the country's current economic conditions."
The bank said that despite Cuba's economic woes, the government had managed to resume payments to foreign companies that had seen their payments blocked and accounts frozen the year before.
It also said the country had managed to renegotiate its foreign debt, though it gave no details. Cuba does not release statistics on foreign debt.
One of the long-term goals of the Cuban government has been to eliminate the two-tiered currency system.
Cuban embargo needs to be terminated in Cuba within a few years so we could see up to 20 million tourists
a year vacationing in Cuba beaches.However there would not be enough hotel rooms to accomodate the tourist. This boom in tourism would certainly bring up the standard of living of the people and improve their civil, political and economic conditions. Notwithstanding the past views of the exile community, perhaps, the so called embargo has been quite counterproductive and in fact, the embargo has helped the support, agony and repression within Cuba of its people for over 50 years. Cuba has five Uranium mines with radiation contamination and no-one seems to care. Cuba has sold uranium to Iran and North Korea and no-one seems to take notice. Openning Cuba to the world and opening the world to Cuba would surely decontaminate othe atmosphere from non-sense and bring sanity and prosperity to the Cuban People.
Cuba's future looks bright as relations betweeen Cuba and the US government seem to be heading in the right direction.

http://Calls2Cuba.com

3/01/2011

CUBA'S FUNNY NEW CAREERS

Cuban Mansions for Rent

CRAZY CUBAN OCCUPATIONS

This year the Cuban communist government laid off over 500,000 of its state employees and the population of laid off Cubans are now trying to go into private Cuban businesses.
Almost 200 private sector Cuban businesses are now permitted.

CUBAN FUNNY JOBS

* Trained Dog Exhibitor
* Engraver of Numbers
* Fresh Fruit Peeler
* Operator of Children's Fun Wagon Pulled by Pony or Goat
* Button Coverer
* Spark Plug Cleaner and Tester
* Animal Hairdresser
* Plastic Covering Maker for IDs
* Disposable Lighter Repair and Refill
* Dandy (Man dressed in Colonial era garb)
* Habaneras (Women who pose for tourists wearing colorful dresses with flowery headdress)
* Wheelbarrow Operator
* Animal Rental
* Palm Tree Trimmer
* Producer/Seller of Rubber Accessories (relates to pressure cooker seals and blender O-rings)
* Pinata Maker/Seller
* Producer/Seller of Food and Beverages With Special Characteristics relating to Chinatown
* Seller of Animals for Religious Use
* PA System Operator
* The Musical Group "Los Mambises!"

Castro, in 2002, beneath a statue of José Martí

Image via Wikipedia

Fidel Promotes New Jobs For Cubans

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1/31/2011

CUBA OPENS FOR BUSINESS AFTER 50 YEARS

Cubans Celebrate New Rules for Business in Cuba

CUBANS OPEN BUSINESSES
CUBA- Cuban government has announced they are opening Cuba's closed communist economy to a new breed of Cuban private enterprise. Cuban entreprenours have been transforming their homes, apartmetns, cars and everything else they have into a new business opportunity
even in old run-down sections of Old Havana.All they want is to open thier own business and be their own masters. It's not going to get rich, just to make only a little more than $12-a-month job at a state-run Cuban government institution.

Tens of thousands of Cubanos are chasing their entrepreneurial ambitions in Cuba's year of economic change, hopeful that a sweeping fiscal overhaul announced last year by President Raul Castro is for real. The Cuban leader said the country would lay off half a million state workers by March 31, while granting licenses for a broad, if slightly random, array of businesses. Cuba's new entrepreneurs face towering challenges in getting their enterprises off the ground, including high taxes, a lack of raw materials, an uncertain customer base, labyrinthine bureaucratic rules and limited access to startup capital. Yet, their success or failure will go a long way in determining the future of Cuba's revolution.

The Cuban state now employs 85% of the island's workers and controls 90 percent of the economy in one of the world's last bastions of Soviet-style communism. If the free-market experiment works, the cash-strapped government could shed millions of dollars from its payroll while boosting much-needed tax revenues and creating a new business and consumer class. It could also legalize part of a booming black market that provides everything from sausages to satellite television.

Image via WikipediaIf this Free market experiment fails, however, this suffering country will have turned hundreds of thousands of people out of their government jobs and into an uncertain future. All of this in the same year that Raul Castro turns 80, and his older brother Fidel is widely expected to step down from his final official post as head of the Communist Party. So far over 80,000 Cubans have received new licenses, joining about 150,000 private sector workers left over from the island's last dabble with capitalism. Government economists say they hope a quarter of a million new entrepreneurs will eventually sign up.

Almost all the new businesses are small, operating out of homes or on street corners. But the stakes for Cuba couldn't be higher, with the economy weighed down by crippling disorganization, a broken infrastructure, endemic corruption and an enormous labor force that has become accustomed to getting paid very little — and doing very little in return. Among the thousands who have taken the leap into private enterprise are Maria Regla Saldivar, a 52-year-old black belt in Taekwondo who plans to open a gymnasium in the ruins of a destroyed laundromat, and Javier Acosta, who has started an upscale restaurant catering to tourists. There is Danilo Perez, a 21-year-old accountant who has gotten a license to buy and sell bootleg DVDs in Havana's hardscrabble El Cerro neighborhood, and Anisia Cardenas, a seamstress with a license to make clothes.

Many others are giving manicures, painting homes, fixing cars and driving taxis — services on the list of 178 officially-sanctioned private activities. Some of the other opportunities are more obscure, such as fresh fruit peeling. And some are so specific they refer to just two people, like No. 159, which makes it legal to be part of the Amor Dance Duo. Even the Cuban government warned that many of the businesses will fail within a year. And many Cubans say privately that they will wait and see if ventures such as Hidalgo's prosper before jumping into the fray themselves.

But for now, optimism and excitement are the mantra for cuba's new entrepreneurs.
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11/13/2012

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