The Cuban government is creating an additional 118 public Internet access points, but users must still pay $4.50 an hour to surf the web, in a country where the average monthly salary is just $20, reported the Associated Press.
Moscow has agreed to write off part of Cuba’s $30 billion debt and will offer a 10-year refinancing plan for the remaining amount, Russia’s industry and trade minister said today.
The preliminary agreement means Cuba will not have to shoulder the full burden of its Soviet-era debt, but details of the specific proportion of debt to be written off and restructured will only be finalised by the end of the year, said Russian industry and trade minister Denis Manturov at the sidelines of talks in Havana between Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Cuba’s Raul Castro.
Cuba is unlikely to attain energy independence anytime over the next five years, said energy experts on Monday, after the nation’s latest attempt to drill for oil offshore proved to be a bust, while no further exploratory activity is expected in the short term.
Cuba’s oil hopes are hanging on its last thread, reported the Associated Press on Tuesday, after Spanish oil Repsol announced its decision to cease all oil exploration efforts in the country following more than $100 million spent drilling only to hit a dry well.
Private businesses and tax revenues will soon make up nearly 50 percent of Cuba’s economic activity, said a senior Communist party official over the weekend, as the government attempts to move gradually towards a market socialism model for the economy.
Pope Benedict XVI, on a ‘spiritual pilgrimage’ to Cuba, has criticised the US trade embargo on Cuba, saying it has ‘unfairly burdened’ Cubans.
At his farewell speech in Havana’s Revolution Plaza, the Pope made several references to what he saw as the need for ‘authentic freedom’.
Even before he arrived in Cuba, the Pope had been reiterating the call for freedom, brotherhood and reconciliation, as well as references to prisoners and those ‘deprived of freedom’.
On November 10 2011, Cuba’s Communist Party implemented free market-like reforms to the nation’s property market, by finally allowing Cubans to buy and sell property on their own. These reforms have been met by both optimism and scepticism from within the Cuban and international community, as doubts remain over their long-term future. How will these reforms affect Cuba, and how should the rest of the world react?
During the 1950s, Cuba was a country with a strong economy but even so, it was unequal with significant capital outflows going to foreign investors. Since that time, great progress has been seen, primarily with better income distribution. In fact, Cuba experienced one of the fastest growing economies in all of Latin America until the Soviet Union collapsed in that it was Cuba’s most prominent trading partner.
