Despite his busy schedule of accession to Russia in the last 48 hours, Miguel Díaz-Canel found time to receive this Friday to Ahmed Bin Aqeel Al-Khateeb, Minister of Tourism of Saudi Arabia and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Saudi Fund for Development. As in the case of Vladimir Putin’s emissaries, the president welcomed Arab officials with open arms.
Díaz-Canel described the visitors as “true friends”, whose economic ties with Cuba he described as “indestructible”. He thanked the Arab country for having financed several “hydraulic projects in important Cuban cities” and in other communities. “We maintain full coordination in all fields,” he said.
The Saudi Fund for Development pay to two large hydraulic projects: one to improve the water supply in Jatibonico, in Sancti Spíritus, and another that will benefit various municipalities in Havana. They will also evaluate investing in the aqueduct and sewage system in the provinces of Camagüey and Villa Clara.
Al-Khateeb assured that Saudi Arabia was going to stay “by Cuba’s side” in the international arena, and promised “an important donation for the tobacco farmers who were affected by the passage of the cyclone that hit them recently,” although He did not specify what it would consist of.
Although the official press did not allude to it, Al-Khateeb thanked the Havana government for helping Saudi Arabia host the World’s Fair to be held in 2030. Cuba was quick to offer its support, the minister observed, and now there are already 138 states that have joined the petition.
Díaz-Canel described the visitors as “true friends”, whose economic ties with Cuba he described as “indestructible”.
The Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, the Minister of Tourism, Juan Carlos García Granda, the Vice Chancellor, Elio Rodríguez Perdomo, the president of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources and also Ricardo Cabrisas, head of the Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment.
Cabrisas held a separate meeting with Al-Khateeb, in which the Arab minister declared that the island was a “strategic place” in the interests of Saudi Arabia and guaranteed that he would support Havana in any international claim against the blocking He was also pleased that the Island had continued sending doctors to his country since 2014.
According to official sourcesthe Island has sent more than 600 toilets to the Arab country since that year, distributed in 34 Saudi cities, especially in Jizan and Bisha.
But financing from Saudi Arabia has not been restricted to the hydraulic sphere. It was that country that provided the money to raise the Fidel Castro Ruz Center, the luxurious museum dedicated to the former Cuban president located in El Vedado, Havana. Inaugurated on November 25, 2021 and destined to be a magnet for tourists fond of Castro, the great unknown that surrounded the creation of the museum was its cost.
A source from the Havana Historian’s Office assured this newspaper that much of the money came from Saudi Arabia. “The credit was supposed to be for housing but they took a part for the Center and for the Capitol as well,” the source maintained.
In 2017, the Fund chaired by Al-Khateeb granted a loan of 26.6 million dollars to Cuba for the Rehabilitation and Construction of Social Works Program of that Havana organization, from which, the source alleges, the money for the pharaonic project came.
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