Misunderstanding? Cuba Government: Cuban-Americans' PYME Financing, Yes. PYME Investment, Yes. PYME Ownership, No. PMYE Need For Direct Banking With United States, Not Necessary.
/Cuba Government Official: PYME Financing, Yes. PYME Investment, Yes. PYME Ownership, No. PMYE Need For Banking With United States, Don’t Understand Why.
Really? So Government Of Cuba Is Accepting With The Inefficiency And Expense Of Transferring Commercial Funds Through Third Countries? Owners Of PYMEs Would Beg To Disagree.
An Unfortunate Convergence When An Official In Cuba And Biden-Harris Administration Share Common Ground.
Miami Herald (22 September 2023): “Cuba’s government is considering allowing Cuban Americans to invest in and own businesses on the island, Havana officials told representatives of U.S. companies and Cuban Americans from Miami who met Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel on Friday. Cuban officials said they are “contemplating it and working on legislation to get it done,” when asked about the possibility by several people attending the closed-door event at the Cuban mission to the United Nations, said Miami lawyer Ralph Patiño, who was present during the exchange.”
Whether defined as PyME (pequeña y mediana empresa; small and medium enterprise), or MSME (micro, small and medium-size enterprise), or SME (small and medium-size enterprise), there has within the Republic of Cuba during the last five years been a dramatic re-emergence in the private sector: The number of private businesses, what those private businesses are doing, and how those private businesses are operating. There has also been an increase in Republic of Cuba government-operated companies, enterprises, and organizations transitioning to “private” status.
WLRN
Miami, Florida
29 September 2023
excerpts…
[00:00:00] Speaker 1 I'm Tim Padgett. Welcome back to the South Florida. Round up on our end…. This week, scores of private entrepreneurs from Communist Cuba visited Miami to get tips from their Cuban-American counterparts and maybe network some investment relationships. It was another sign that Cuba's government has come to the realization that private enterprise is about the only thing now that can save the island's wrecked economy. Officials in Havana, of course, blame the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba for that disaster. But either way, it's forcing them to consider deeper changes. I spoke about this with Carlos Fernandez. He's vice minister of Cuba's Foreign Relations Ministry. He joined me from New York. Mr. Vice Minister, thank you for speaking with us.
[00:00:56] Speaker 2 (de Cossio) It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:54] Speaker 1 Mr. Vice Minister, in spite of this attack, how would you describe bilateral relations between Cuba and the U.S. at this moment? Do you feel they've improved under President Biden, especially after President Trump's harder line against Cuba?
[00:02:07] Speaker 2 The line that is being applied is a loyalty to the policy or reinforcement of the aggressive measures against the Cuban economy. And the government of Biden has kept the most aggressive of those in place. In spite of that, there have been some steps in areas like migration, some level of cooperation in law enforcement, including in terrorism, by the way, and in environmental science, arts, culture, education, which are important, but they are not what one can say the essence of the bilateral relationship.
[00:02:41] Speaker 1 Well, that brings me to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel speech last week at the U.N. General Assembly in which he criticized the U.S. for what he called its merciless economic warfare against Cuba. Diaz-Canel was obviously referring to the embargo. Why do you feel the U.S. keeps the embargo in place after more than 60 years?
[00:03:01] Speaker 2 Well, that's a question that we normally try to ask the U.S. government. Cuba is not an enemy of the United States. There's no hostile action by Cuba against the United States. There are political disagreements. Yes, we have political disagreements with reality in the U.S., as the U.S. has it with Cuba. And that's part of international relations all over the place. The reason seems to be, we're told by politicians in the U.S. that are political calculations, that it's difficult for them because votes in this election next year, all of which seems to us illegitimate reasons to continue to have a policy aimed at strangling the economy, the livelihood of the population of the whole country.
[00:03:39] Speaker 1 But the U.S., including the Biden administration, insists that it's hard to lift the embargo when Cuba remains what it calls a repressive dictatorship, one that has more than a thousand political prisoners locked up, most of them people who took part in large anti-government protests two years ago. Would it not be a positive step toward lifting the embargo if Cuba were to release most, if not all, of those prisoners?
[00:04:04] Speaker 2 Thousands of people participated in the demonstration in Cuba over two years ago. Thousands and a few hundred were prosecuted. The ones that were prosecuted were not prosecuted because of what they think or what they said or what they shouted or why they expressed. They were prosecuted for vandalizing, for attacking people, for assaulting a police station, for overturning police cars and civilian cars. And that in Cuba is a crime, as I suspect is in the United States.
[00:04:28] Speaker 1 I understand. But for the record, international human rights groups say between 507 hundred were prosecuted for the 2021 protests and that many were merely marching or demonstrating.
[00:04:38] Speaker 2 People have been put in jail for the events of January 6th in the United States who were not even present at the place just because they were accused of inciting people to go to Capitol Hill on January six, 2021.
[00:04:51] Speaker 1 At the same time, Cuba's serious economic crisis just keeps getting worse. And we're seeing record numbers of Cubans especially. Younger Cubans leaving the island. Do you feel all the blame for that rests on the U.S. and the embargo, or is the Cuban government now recognizing its own economic mistakes and mismanagement?
[00:05:11] Speaker 2 There's a combination of factors. First, we have the effects of COVID, and we have to remember that we shut the country. That depends on tourism as a main source of income, and we shut it totally. We have not recovered yet. But there's an extraordinary and artificial impact of that, which is the U.S. economic blockade, which is aimed at making the economy unworkable. And then you add to that, which is also true, that we have issues of structure in our economy that we need to improve and that we are trying to transform under very big difficulties. And we have had mismanagement, inefficiencies in what we do, which we recognize that we have to improve.
[00:05:45] Speaker 1 That, of course, brings us to the dynamic growth we're seeing in Cuba's private sector since the communist government legalized those small and medium sized businesses known as Pemex two years ago. This seems an area where the U.S. and Cuba can find common ground. Both governments have approved U.S. investment in Cuban private enterprises, but Cuba says it's waiting for the U.S. to soften the embargo and make bilateral banking available. While the U.S. says it's waiting on Cuba to present clear investment rules before it can do that. When do you see all of this getting resolved?
[00:06:18] Speaker 2 I think there's a misunderstanding. Cuba is not waiting for the U.S. to act in any measure. The growth of the private sector in Cuba is a national decision by Cuba. We're taking on our own, regardless of what the United States does. We have conceived the private sector in the past few years as part of our economic development as and as an actor in the Cuban economy. Now, this sector also suffers from the economic blockade, but Cuba does not need a bilateral banking relationship with the United States for the private sector in Cuba to prosper.
[00:06:49] Speaker 1 Most of the Cuban private sector tells us they do need it. But there's been a tendency in the past for the Cuban government to let the private sector grow and then all of a sudden clamp down on it and rein it in. Is that sort of thing finally over?
[00:07:03] Speaker 2 Well, we have approved is medium and small sized enterprises. We're not, at least for the moment, conceiving in our economic overview to have big monopolies and big concentrations of property and big concentration of wealth and big concentrations of capital. What we want is to an expansion as many as possible and add a level playing field for all, for many to have opportunity to flourish, not to have a few who concentrate and become monopolies in any sector. That is our aim. Now, this is the new reality in Cuba and regulation is coming behind it.
[00:07:38] Speaker 1 Including clear rules for foreign investment in the private sector.
[00:07:41] Speaker 2 Yes, we are trying to regulate what is becoming the normal reality. But corporate law still has to be approved a law for corporations in Cuba. What is following what's happening? When we began this three years ago, there was no clear picture of where this was going. Which were the sectors that were going to grow? Which were the territories in the country where they're going to grow the most, which was going to be their export exposure because many of them work within Cuba, but some need to import and some wish to export. That reality has to show itself so that we can regulate something that is appropriate to what's really happening.
[00:08:17] Speaker 1 Last week in New York, President Diaz-Canel also told Cuban-Americans they may be welcome in the future to own businesses in Cuba. That would seem to represent a big thaw between Havana and Miami.
[00:08:30] Speaker 2 I'm surprised by what you're saying, because I was at that meeting and the president never said that. Whoever reported that either was not present or is not or did not get a good recollection of what happened in that place. The president said that they are welcome, not not just as of this meeting that we have in place, a policy that he personally has defended that invites Cubans that live abroad in the U.S. or in Europe and Latin America, in Asia, to invest in Cuba, to be part of the economy and to participate and contribute to the Cuban economy. That is a message he ratified at that meeting. Opening actual business in Cuba for people who reside in Cuba. Cubans that live abroad can participate like a Canadian, like a Spaniard. But if you want to establish a company to be a resident in the place, and this is a law that is not only particular to Cuba, many countries around the world, if you want to establish a company, you have to be a resident in the place where you are.
[00:09:24] Speaker 1 Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. Mr. Vice Minister, we've been talking about the growth of the private sector in Cuba. Do you feel that the economic liberalization that's taking part there could lead to more political liberalization in Cuba, especially, for example, letting parties other than the Cuban Communist Party run in elections?
[00:09:46] Speaker 2 We we are not aiming at that. If you call liberalization, having money, participate in politics and having parties serve as machines so that politicians. Can be moved and then corporations and the wealthy have the capacity to finance and buy political favors. That is something we're not conceding in Cuba. We're not looking at that.
[00:10:09] Speaker 1 But you still don't think a healthy pluralism could come of it?
[00:10:12] Speaker 2 We believe that if parties, which is happens in many countries, become machineries so that money and capital can be the engine of political advancement. That is something we are not considering in Cuba. We don't think it's healthy or will be useful or appropriate for a country.
[00:10:28] Speaker 1 I see. Mr. Vice Minister, I also need to ask you about the recent controversy regarding Cuban mercenaries going to fight for Russia against Ukraine. The Cuban government insists it has broken up a ring that was trafficking those Cubans to Russia. Critics have said the Cuban government actually knew before about the mercenaries going there to fight and encouraged it. How do you respond to that? And what is the state of Cuba's relations with Russia now after Havana distanced itself recently from Moscow's Ukraine campaign?
[00:11:00] Speaker 2 This is a ring that was first detected by us, followed by us, and that was treated as through different violations of the law. One is human trafficking in which you penalize the trafficker and the person who's trafficked you treat as a victim. For us, that was not enough. And we incorporate another law, the use of another law that we have in Cuba, which is against mercenaries, which is which prohibits Cubans to take up arms against another country. So we applied that to show that we go after the trafficker and we also go after the person who is willingly attempting to involve himself in a military conflict in another country. Before we made this public. We spoke with the government of Russia, with which we have a good relationship. We spoke with the government that Ukraine, with the US government, with the European Union, with several other governments in which we talked about this. We explained our concern and we also asked for information if they had.
[00:12:02] Speaker 1 But it was just a few months ago that Cuba was signing major investment deals with Russia in the hope of getting some economic support, especially for fuel, which your government this week admitted Cuba just doesn't have enough of to meet its needs. This Russia based mercenary scandal hasn't compromised that friendship at all.
[00:12:20] Speaker 2 Our relationship with with Russia is a good relationship. We don't believe it's damaged, even though on some issues we might not have an exact point of view.
[00:12:29] Speaker 1 Vice Minister Fernandez de Cassio, thank you for speaking with us.
[00:12:33] Speaker 2 Thank you very much for this opportunity.
[00:12:35] Speaker 1 That was my conversation yesterday with Carlos Fernandez. He's vice minister of Cuba's Foreign Relations Ministry. Still to come, Miami-Dade County is racing to get rid of septic tanks. This is the South Florida round up on Lauren.
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