The volume of cement sent to Pinar del Río since the beginning of 2023 should have reached, as planned, to rebuild half of the houses affected by Hurricane Ian in that province; however, with these materials, barely 32% of the demand has been solved, Minister of Construction René Mesa revealed in mid-July.
During the first half of this year, Pinar del Río received 10,410 tons of cement for the recovery of its housing fund, but the works carried out justify the employment of only 6,700 tons. The fate of the remaining 3,700 tons remains to be clarified. One part is probably “immobilized” in warehouses or markets for materials, and another in the hands of victims who have not used it for various reasons. But there is a risk that a significant percentage has ended up on the black market.
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero warned about this last possibility in September 2022. If what was delivered is diverted, stolen or misappropriated, “the affectation persists in the family, and in the government, and the responsibility for the solution remains ours,” he stated.
His comment was addressed to local officials, from various ministries and the Civil Defense, gathered for an update on the recovery in the five provinces most affected by the meteorological events of recent months.
“One sees progress in Las Tunas, Holguín is on the way, but the rest is not right, and we have to say it that way,” Marrero said. Among all the recovery programs (agriculture, roads, electricity, etc.), housing is the one with the greatest delays.
A week later, Housing General Director Vivian Rodríguez ratified before the National Assembly of People’s Power that it is precisely the provinces with the worst housing situation that undertake fewer renovations and new works. Pinar del Río, which occupies the last positions in all statistical sections (rebuilt houses, partial and total reconstructions, roof reconstructions, etc.), is the extreme case, she specified.
The issue led to a sort of disagreement between Rodríguez and members of the Industry, Construction and Energy commission. While the first emphasized that 97% of the plan had been executed by the end of May, implying that the year’s commitment could be fulfilled, in its report, the parliamentary commission made a contrary reading of the future scenario, qualifying it as of “significant risk of non-compliance in the year,” according to a Prensa Latina dispatch.
Little production, more exports
Anyone even minimally informed could anticipate that the housing news would not be good in the traditional parliamentary rendering of accounts in July. It was enough to inquire about the state of the Cuban construction materials industry.
At the beginning of June, during a Mesa Redonda TV program on the subject, the vice president of the Construction Materials Business Group (GEICON), Reynold Ramírez, insisted at least four times that the productions of the industry under his responsibility would continue “to be insufficient for the growing demand of the population.” Although the sector’s plans for this calendar are more ambitious than those for 2022, their true magnitude is not appreciated until they are compared with the plan of five years ago; and the conclusion is not good.
According to the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), in 2018 Cuba produced more than 94 million concrete blocks, 9.7 million mud bricks, 4.1 million cubic meters of crushed stone and 1 .7 million of calcareous sand (for resistance). In 2023, this production should be 4.9 million blocks, 1.3 million bricks, 2.9 million cubic meters of stone and 907,000 meters of “total sand” (apparently, the section also summarizes the so-called “washed sands”).
In their statistical list, the executives did not include data on the two materials usually most in demand for construction activity: steel and cement. Not even during the intervention of the general director of the Cement Group, Herácleo Porto Valdés, during the rendering of accounts in the National Assembly.
Porto tiptoed over the current statistics of the sector, to focus on the prospects of the cement industry, whose “production for the year 2025 should be much higher.” The new cement production plants that are installed in Nuevitas and Santiago de Cuba, and the investments planned for the other four Cuban factories should sustain the projected recovery, he predicted.
Virtually any result will be better than that of 2022, when barely 680,000 tons of gray cement came out of Cuban factories (43% of what was produced in 2018). It was not the most significant drop: in the same period, the production of corrugated steel bars contracted to 8,500 tons (13% of the already meager closing of 2018) and that of billets (raw material for the bars) to 13,600 tons (7.8% of what was produced five years ago).
As with cement, investments in the metallurgical industry are intended to reverse the crisis, but the construction of new plants solves only half the problem. Along with industries, to produce cement it is necessary to have an abundant supply of fuel and energy, which Cuba finds challenging to guarantee.
In addition to the shortage of materials, housing construction must deal with increasing “competition” from exports. According to data reported in the Mesa Redonda program, in 2023, 16.4 million dollars’ worth of exports of construction materials are expected; fifteen times more than in 2022 and one hundred times more than in 2021.
As national production recovers at a much slower pace, this “leap” in exports will only be possible if the already insufficient supply of the domestic market is reduced. In 2015 and 2018, billets, aggregates, cement and clinker — raw material for cement — were the most sold items by Cuba outside its borders.
In the fifth year of the “Policy”
The year 2018 is not a casual reference as far as housing is concerned. It was the last “normal” year in Cuba: 2019 was marked by the current situation, and since 2020 the pandemic and the economic crisis have weighed down national daily life. In addition, in December 2018, the Ministry of Construction presented to Parliament the Housing Policy, the state program under which it was intended to end the housing deficit within a period of ten years. In 2023, the fifth year of the Policy, the plan was to build 52,162 homes and rehabilitate another 41,246.
In short, those projections should have been lowered. During the recent parliamentary accountability, it was learned that the approved plan for 2023 had been set at 25,134 new dwellings and 24,400 renovations. An improvement compared to the two “pandemic” years, when, according to ONEI, 18,645 and 20,232 homes were finished, respectively, but far from the accumulated needs, especially in the eastern half of the country, the most disadvantaged in terms of development and public investment.
In 2018, the Housing Policy estimated that the most complex situation in this area was concentrated in the five eastern provinces and Camagüey, Villa Clara and Havana, which would need at least ten years to cover their housing deficits.
Over time, Pinar del Río was incorporated into that group of “stragglers,” due to the way in which meteorological events have hit its housing base. Hurricane Ian alone left more than 93,000 damaged homes there.
The government plan was that outside of Havana and Santiago de Cuba, at least 60% of the works would be carried out by the population itself, in terms of payment and execution. That plan should be based on an alleged economic recovery that would increase purchasing power and increase the supply of materials, two premises that have not been fulfilled to date. Nor have the so-called plans for the local production of materials become a viable alternative (all construction ends up needing, to a greater or lesser extent, industrial resources such as cement and steel).
Beyond parliamentary verifications and calls for administrative control, the shortage will continue to encourage corruption. In addition, with the available resources, Cuba’s housing needs will never be satisfied. Perhaps it is time to think about other forms of investment, including foreign investment, to finance such an essential program. Walls are not built with good will and exhortations.
Author
Amado Viera
