And the Fair was held. The simple fact of being held is very notable due to the difficult context in which this Havana Fair has been held.
On the one hand, an atmosphere of war in the Caribbean, thanks to the Trump government. On the other hand, internal conditions that pointed to its suspension: from an electro-energy system quasi collapsed, something that is already part of our daily lives, or, as a friend likes to say, “new abnormality.”
We must add to the equation Hurricane Melissa and its aftermath of thousands of affected families, many of whom lost everything. Everything, from the very little they owned. Arboviruses also became another enemy of the Fair.
Other reasons that could influence the Fair not to occur have to do with the conditions of the economy and the national market. From macroeconomic behavior we have at least two relatively positive signs. Reducing the fiscal deficit is one; the other is the slowdown in price growth.
I think they are two results that in other conditions of the real economy we could celebrate. However, the reduction of the deficit occurs while billions of CUP remain unexecuted in a country that suffers from a health crisis that is expressed in the mountains of garbage in our streets and in the streams of sewage that run through the curbs of the sidewalks. And these facts also explain the current arbovirus epidemic, just to give an example.
Meanwhile, the slowdown in price increases is not expressed in the increase in the purchasing power of salaries and pensions, and inequality and poverty continue to grow in our country.
In both cases, other structural factors are still present and question the medium-term sustainability of the reduction in both indicators.
The Fair took place despite this string of macroeconomic, social and all kinds of problems that we all know and that it is not worth describing again here.
The Fair was held even despite the publication, by a press agency, of the decision communicated to foreign companies that their dollar accounts that they used to pay for operations in the national market could no longer be used for these purposes.
But this Fair was colored by other important events.
On the one hand, the decision approved in the Council of Ministers that allowed all wholesale companies, regardless of the form of ownership, to be able to trade with all entities of the national economy, a decision that, although very delayed – which is already part of our normality – is, from my perspective, very convenient and can contribute to better business dynamics.
Previously, the issued standard only allowed wholesale trade of those goods that the company itself produced.
The Fair also occurs after an important document has been published, entitled Government Program to correct distortions and re-boost the economy, after a long wait for almost two years.
This is an extensive document that will require in-depth study by experts and also by all the people as it has finally been called for public discussion. It defines some objectives that have directly to do with the Purpose of an International Trade and Investment Fair.
Then, at the same opening of the Fair, the First Vice Minister and Minister of Foreign Trade announced a group of measures that, seen as a whole, could lead us to think that once again we are embarking on the path of “changing everything that needs to be changed”, although our economic history shows that we have always been faster in abandoning it than in adopting it.
Below is a summary that a colleague kindly sent me.
– The Foreign Investment Law is going to be modified.
– Foreign companies will be able to operate in CUP and currencies flexibly.
– Electronic commerce with payment abroad will be promoted.
– The feasibility study is replaced by a business plan (simplification).
– The evaluation period by state agencies is reduced from 15 to 7 days, and silence will be considered approval.
– The possibility of hiring personnel directly is added (maintained with prior participation of the employing agency).
– Any foreign modality can sell wholesale to any economic actor that has the capacity to pay; There is no obstacle and nothing that prohibits it.
– Companies will have access to the purchase of fuel in currency without restrictions, and if necessary, import fuel for their operation.
– New business model: Make an underused area or facility available for development to the foreign investor, and at the end of the term, revert to the State.
– There is a new portfolio on the MINCEX site: https://invierteencuba.mincex.gob.cu/es/
– (Selective) swap operations to exchange obligations linked to sustainable businesses, which generate foreign currency, reduce debt or generate new financing.
– Possibility of investments in residential projects that generate foreign currency income to the country, with the use of renewable energy.
– Priorities: exports and import substitution, food production and knowledge-intensive activities.
– There will be a greater participation of foreign capital in the banking-financial sector, to which all economic actors will be able to access.
– Creation of new special development zones for specific destinations, from real estate businesses to science-technology parks.
– Development of business models of the type construction, operation and transfer (BOT)
– Cubans residing abroad have the same possibilities as any other foreign investor.
It was announced in the official presentation that this new portfolio of opportunities contains 426 projects, which cover 13 sectors, 35 correspond to the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM), 38, eight respond to local initiatives, and all provinces are represented.
Today Cuba has 376 active businesses from 40 countries (there is no information by type of business or country), of which 56 are located in the ZEDM.
In 2025, as reported at the Business Forum, 32 new projects from 13 countries were approved and the amount of committed capital reached 2.1 billion US dollars.
If we were to take stock of the announced measures, we could say that at least the letter indicates a process of opening and a certain decentralization that many today recognize as necessary if we want to get out of the stagnation in which our economy finds itself.
Without a doubt, there is a lot to do so that these new measures that promote the opening of the country can materialize in the shortest time possible.
Although formally all of them are aimed at the external sector of the economy and introduce changes in its regulatory framework, the truth is that for any of them to function, substantial changes and transformations will be needed in the general institutional framework of the country.
The “rules of the game” need other “rules of the game” that complement each other and produce the necessary synergy between all economic agents. For example, the much-mentioned and delayed corporate law comes to mind, but more than the law itself, the undeniable fact that state-owned companies manage to free themselves from the ties with which the ministries keep them under their tutelage.
The rules of the game also need organizations to put them into effect, and these organizations depend on people who understand and accept these changes, many of whom may contradict their interests, whether those of their organization or their personal ones.
These rules of the game require a less vertical organizational structure; that steps in the decision process be eliminated; that the dynamics and agility in decision-making and in opening new businesses are not sacrificed in the face of uncontrolled and omnipresent control, often in the worst of its forms.
These new “rules of the game” need coherence and consistency. Incoherence and inconsistency do not help at all.
I draw attention to one of them. Approvals of new businesses with foreign capital will take no more than a week and the non-response of an organization is taken as an acceptance, or in other words, they would be approved by default.
It is paradoxical then that the approval of an MSME goes through a bureaucratic process that can take months, that bounces from hands to hands of people who sometimes know absolutely nothing about that type of business and ends up in the hands of subjectivity and arbitrariness.
How is it possible that a deal worth millions can be approved in a week, which I think is very good, and yet a deal that only involves a few thousand is delayed for months or even years?
Another one of those inconsistencies. The treatment of foreign investment in the national private sector still remains under study.
It has been “under study” for at least three years now. However, it is an open secret that a part of the investments that the private sector makes is supported by “foreign investments.” The delay in recognizing and formalizing this situation greatly harms a more efficient use of these investment resources that, even if their amount is not significant in some cases, is necessary because the State has no way to satisfy it.
It is even more incoherent when it is also known that a good part of this external financing is provided by a part of Cubans residing abroad, who, as was stated very clearly at the Fair, must be treated on equal terms with non-Cuban foreign investors.
The investment potential that we continue to waste or use without taking advantage of its full potential is a cost that we must charge to incoherence.
But it is very good that all these measures have been announced, it is very good that they chart a certain course when everything indicates that the bow rudder is not working. It is very good that these measures provoke the need for new changes. That, in my opinion, was the most important merit of this 2025 Fair.
