More tourism, investments in the food sector and the opening of a supermarket chain are the promises of a group of Argentine businessmen to Miguel Díaz-Canel. The meeting, in a small room in Buenos Airespassed last Monday without mentioning the crisis that the Island is experiencing in almost all sectors or the million-dollar debt that the Cuban State has with Argentina.
Díaz-Canel, in the company of the foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, the Minister of Foreign Trade, Rodrigo Malmierca, and other officials, was sure of what he could ask of the businessmen, whose response was absolute optimism about the business possibilities in the Island.
The most ambitious proposal was that of businessman Hipólito Benzo, president of the Trading Sur company, who guaranteed the implementation of three projects: one related to production, another in agreement with the Cuban Ministry of Internal Commerce to launch “a chain of wholesale supermarkets ” and a third for the preparation of food for animal consumption.
“There are five people from our group analyzing the land, the climate, the seeds, to see how we can help them produce,” Benzo explained. As for animal feed, he assured that he had already sent “the first load of corn and flour” to the island. The Cuban delegation commented, in turn, that he wanted to create the conditions to “export own productions.”
The idyllic vision of conditions in Cuba was also defended by the Argentine Jorge Neme, Secretary of Development Planning and Federal Competitiveness, who exposed a “round trip” relationship regarding food production and trade between Cuba and Argentina.
“The Island has favorable conditions for the development of a set of crops that are very complicated for us. We are talking about tropical fruits, products that we do not have the land or the conditions to produce here.”
“The Island has favorable conditions for the development of a set of crops that are very complicated for us. We are talking about tropical fruits, products that we do not have the land or the conditions to produce here,” Neme said.
Regarding tourism, Claudio Palacios, director of the tourist agency Julià Tours Argentina, spoke. “Argentine tourists long to return to Cuba to enjoy its beaches. People repeat the Cuba destination on their vacations [por tener] the best beaches in the world and wonderful people,” Palacios told Díaz-Canel.
The president said he was “convinced” that the business could be “consolidated,” but he avoided making unnecessary promises to the Argentines, whom he called “friends and brothers.”
Díaz-Canel attributed the lack of cooperation between the two countries since 2019, the date of his first meeting with Argentine businessmen, to the coronavirus pandemic, the “blockade” of the United States and the inclusion of Cuba in the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, which complicated the transactions and signing of contracts.
The Cuban president, present in the Argentine capital for the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), attended the meeting despite criticism against the participation of the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Both Nicolás Maduro and Daniel Ortega chose not to go.
Díaz-Canel’s return to Argentina once again brought up the issue of the already historical debt between both States. Since 1974, Havana has owed an amount that, after decades of accrued interest and penalties for delays, some economists estimate at 15 billion dollars.
The initial amount, a loan requested by Fidel Castro fifty years ago, has been demanded by several Argentine administrations, including that of Fernández, without any reaction from the Cuban government.
Despite the current cordiality between the two leaders, Fernández wanted to collect the debt in 2020, at the beginning of his term, but Havana ignored it.
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