Most of Cuba’s foreign trade is with countries of America (55 percent), followed by Europe (27), Asia (15) and Africa, Middle East and Oceania (three), Ivonne Vertiz, deputy director general of the Ministry of Foreign Investment Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment (MINCEX) explained to twenty Guatemalan private entrepreneurs
The main trading partners of Cuba, she said, are Venezuela, China, Spain, Canada, Brazil, Holland, Mexico, Italy and France because “It is a policy of the Cuban government to diversify our investments,” she said in that country with which diplomatic relations were restored in 1998 and whose trade with the island for six years amounts to about $ 22 million annually.
To representatives of the Agricultural Cooperative Federation of Coffee Producers of Guatemala, the National Association of Poultry Farmers, and of the chambers of commerce and industry, the official highlighted, according to the Cuban Embassy in Guatemala and Cuba Minrex website – the potential of the Special Zone Development Mariel (ZEDEM) once it comes into force this month, the Law 118 of Foreign Investment.
The law includes a tax-exempt eight year period for investors and, exceptionally, for a longer period. After that time the tax is 15 percent and zero percent on reinvested earnings.
Vertiz also specified that Cuba is interested in the development of the agricultural and commercial sector, and the food, sugar, iron and steel, light, chemical, electronics, pharmaceutical and biotechnology, as well as tourism, health, transport, construction, energy and mining, and trade.
During the month of May Ana Teresa Igarza Martínez, Director General of the Office of the ZEDM said during an exchange with the business sector in the province of Artemisa that about 23 investment projects from countries such as Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Brazil, China and Russia are among the interests presented.
Through projects in the food, heavy, automotive, light, containers and packaging industries,, as well as in the production of medical equipment and the promotion of renewable energy, interested investors are seeking to establish even jointly with Cuban entities.
The local entrepreneurs must be more agile and dynamic in identifying their potential in the face of possible investment projects, advised Igarza Martinez.
On the infrastructure of the area she announced in late June should conclude actions on railroad with a double track that will link the area with the national rail network and will work on the construction of roads and design of some plots where the first investors and entrepreneurs interested in renewable energy sources can be established.
