Cuba is transforming; and there is no clearer sign of this than the presence at this year’s Havana International Fair of hundreds of western business houses including several major US firms seeking to secure places as close as possible to the top of the cue to seek to do business with a resilient communist regime which, for over more than half a century, Washington had gone to all sorts of extremes to topple.
The transformation in the fair is expected to be characterized by far fewer business houses from middle income mostly Spanish-speaking countries seeking to strike trade deals with Havana in canned goods and low-level technology.
Cuba’s Commerce Minister Rodrigo Malmierca is quoted as saying that the first event of its kind since the dramatic thawing in relations between Washington asnd Havana has “aroused international interest.” Simultaneously, the Cuban official announced that his country has seen “a 4.7 per cent growth in the first half of the year, and is expected to close 2015 at 4 per cent, up from 1.3 per cent in 2014. Malmierca says that Havana is convinced that “it is possible to have a normal and civilized relationship with the United States.”
The change in the climate has pushed US tourist visits up by 18 per cent, or 400,000 additional visitors this year. That has pumped hundreds of millions of additional dollars pumped into the Cuban economy.
The expectation that the US will steadily continue to loosen restrictions on trade with Cuba has set off a fever among international investors, who are furiously trying to get footholds in a market that they believe will soar over the long-term.
This year’s fair, known by the Spanish acronym FIHAV, is the biggest in 15 years, with 300 Cuban companies and 600 from 70 other countries, including 20 from the United States. Pepsi, Napa Auto Parts, Gallo Wines and a US tractor company that just got Cuban permission to set up a plant at the new Mariel port and free trade zone have stands among the typical food exporters, among the few American businesses allowed to sell their goods to Cuban under the US embargo.
Most said they saw few short-term opportunities for business in Cuba due mostly to the thicket of prohibitions in the US embargo.
The US Chamber of Commerce brought a delegation of 40 US companies including Caterpillar, Amway, Sprint and Cargill for meetings with Cuban officials and the first board meeting of the US-Cuba Business Council, a group dedicated to trade between the two countries.
