Cuba News
-
CUBA, 2016/01/28
The Obama government is loosening the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba with a new round of regulations allowing American companies to sell to Cuba on credit and export a potentially wide range of products to the Cuban government for the initial time, officials said Tuesday.
The changes are President Barack Obama's third attempt to spur U.S.-Cuba commerce despite an embargo that still prohibits most forms of trade with the island.
U.S. travel to Cuba has exploded since Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro declared detente in 2014. But U.S. hopes of building wider trade between American businesses and Cuba's private sector have been largely frustrated by Congressional reluctance to end the embargo itself and by the island's labyrinthine restrictions on imports, exports and private business.
-
AFGHANISTAN, 2016/01/02
World economic increase will be disappointing next year and the outlook for the medium-term has as well deteriorated, the chief of the International Monetary Fund said in a guest article for German newspaper Handelsblatt published on Wednesday.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the prospect of rising interest rates in the United States and an economic slowdown in China were contributing to uncertainty and a higher risk of economic vulnerability worldwide.
Added to that, increase in world trade has slowed considerably and a decline in raw material prices is posing problems for economies based on these, while the financial sector in a lot of nations still has weaknesses and financial risks are rising in emerging markets, she said.
-
CUBA, 2015/12/02
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and Cuba’s subsequent hardship while transitioning to a additional decentralized economy in its “Appropriate Period,” Cuba has implemented significant economic changes. While preserving socialist gains finished during the Revolution, it has continued to develop elements of capitalism initial employed by Fidel Castro in response to severe economic times in the 1990s. Cuba has undergone a series of recent transformations in its ability and willingness to attract the kind of foreign investment that is essential in developing and sustaining economic increase.
Until Fidel Castro began decentralizing national economic control by allowing inflows of foreign capital and other outside investment , the Cuban economy contracted drastically. Next the Soviet Union began to dissolve in 1989, Cuba suffered an immediate 75 to 80 % drop in foreign exchange receipts as Soviet subsidies dried up.
Per-capita gain contracted by 34 % from 1990 to 1993 because of a lack of foreign investment and access to international financial institutions, coupled with a hardened U.S. trade embargo.3 Since that Cold War period, Cuba has continuously opened up to foreign investment and has used it to develop struggling elements of the economy. As the Cuban government’s control of the economy has gradually diminished, the island country has seen tremendous improvements in its ability to increase and sustain economic increase.
-
ARUBA, 2015/11/27
The United States Agency for International Improvment(USAID) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) today signed agreements that will see nations of the eastern and southern Caribbean benefiting from US$165 million in development assistance.
An estimated US$89 million will target the reduction of youth involvement in crime and violence in target communities, while US$52 million is designated to achieving epidemic control of HIV/AIDS part key populations, and $31 million will go towards reducing the risks to human and natural assets resulting from climate vulnerability.
CARICOM Secretary General Ambassador Irwin LaRocque and USAID Eastern and Southern Caribbean Mission Director, Christopher Cushing, initialled the five-year Development Objective Agreements (DOAGs) at the CARICOM Secretariat in Guyana.
-
CUBA, 2015/11/27
Since August, at the same time as the reopening of the US Embassy in Havana signalled a new era in US-Cuba relations, the communist Caribbean country has featured prominently in travel circles, earning kudos for various aspects of its tourism plant and securing record bookings.
Presently, the island famous for its cigars, historic buildings, and vintage rolling stock, has made its way onto an extra inventory, in the process gaining the distinction of being the only Caribbean destination to be selected.
This time, Cuba placed part 10 destinations that the world’s top luxury travel specialists are most excited about for 2016, featuring in a inventory compiled for CNN by travel and culture writer Mark Johanson.
-
CUBA, 2015/11/27
The good relations between the United States and Cuba are continuing, with the two nations signing an agreement to cooperate on environmental protection.
The joint declaration was signed at the Cuban Embassy in Washington on Tuesday.
It focuses on sustainable management of natural resources and shared ecosystems, particularly marine biodiversity development, the analysis of the causes and effects of climate change and initiatives to reduce the risks of natural disasters. The Cuban Embassy said that is crucial to reducing vulnerabilities for both nations.
The two nations have agreed, under the declaration, to exchange scientific and technological data and resources. They will as well work towards joint scientific research.
-
CUBA, 2015/08/26
For geographical reasons, neighboring Colombia is a favored gateway for Cubans fleeing Venezuela, who’s a populist government, is struggling to rein-in runaway inflation, widespread shortages of goods and services and rising social unrest.
On Saturday, the exodus reached critical mass at the same time as about 100 Cuban doctors, who deserted a medical mission in Venezuela and have been stranded in Colombia for months awaiting entry into the US, staged a turmoil to draw attention to their plight. Deteriorating conditions in Venezuela are causing increasing numbers of Cuban medical personnel working there to immigrate to the United States under a special US program launched in 2006 that expedites their applications.
Brandishing their diplomas, the Cuban health professionals congregated in a plaza in Kennedy, a working-class neighborhood built in the 1960s with funds from John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Evolution.
-
FRANCE, 2015/05/13
French President François Hollande met with retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his brother and current president, Raul Castro, on Monday during a historic visit to the communist island.
“I had before me a man who made history. There is a debate on what could be his place, his responsibilities. But coming to Cuba, I wanted to meet Fidel Castro,” Hollande told reporters before attending an official welcoming ceremony. He as well met with Raul Castro, who took over at the same time as his brother retired in 2008 due to poor health.
-
CUBA, 2015/04/02
Trinidad and Tobago says it has signed a cooperation agreement with Cuba that will allow for the development of multi-destination tourism packages.
A statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here said that the agreement was signed in Havana by Tourism Minister Gerald Hadeed and his Cuban counterpart Manuel Marrero Cruz.
It said the accord will allow for the exchange of professionals and specialists in scientific research to improve Trinidad and Tobago tourism product inclunding joint venture arrangements in the Cuban tourism industry.
-
AFGHANISTAN, 2015/01/20
Low oil prices will not provide a sufficient updraught to dispel the clouds hanging over the world economy, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.
In a sign of its increasing gloom about the medium term economic outlook, the IMF cut its world economic increase forecasts by 0.3 % points for both 2015 and 2016, despite believing cheaper oil represents a “shot in the arm”.
