MADRID, Spain.- The Italian company Italsav will soon open a shopping center in Havana, according to advertisement ANSA agency. It will be managed jointly with the Cuban Government, although it has not been specified which Cuban entity will share the management.
“By September we will open the first Cuban shopping center that has mixed management, in Havana, with the sale and staff always staying in the Cuban State but the direction and selection of the products to us,” said the owner of Italsav, Berto Savina.
The collaboration between Italsav and Cuba began 30 years ago, when Savina opened several TODOX stores (all for one dollar) on the Island.
The Cuban Government then granted a commercial license to the Marsican company that allowed it to increase its turnover, until it became the first importer of cleaning products for Cuba with more than 160 points of sale, divided between detergent, souvenir and clothing stores with an average shipment of between 70 and 80 containers per month and with a total turnover of 150 million euros in ten years.
In addition, Italsav has made donations to Cuba on different occasions. Among them, “the largest children’s playground in South America dedicated to dinosaurs, with a 1:1 scale reproduction where the animals reach up to 15 m in height, for a total area of 500 square meters,” says ANSA.
Last year, In order “for Cuba to recover from the complex economic situation it was facing” (and is facing), the Cuban authorities announced that they were authorizing foreign investment in wholesale and retail trade through joint ventures.
On that occasion, Betsy Díaz Velázquez, Minister of Internal Commerce, indicated that the mixed companies could sell in the retail network in Cuba, but they would start with the stores in MLC (Freely Convertible Currency) and in an indeterminate future they would do so in the network of stores. in Cuban pesos.
