Cuba's economy.. blog #11

Yesterday in the newspapers i saw that the Cuban enterprise CIMEX is fostering the commercialization of new products such as the Caney rum (12-year aged) with the purpose of increasing its exports and sales amidst the current international financial crisis.This new rum, called Super Premium, is manufactured by the rum industry in eastern Santiago de Cuba.Tranquilino Palencia Estruch, an expert in the manufacture of this rum, said that the initial production of Caney 12 Years has already been sold to Bodegas Torres and the Sotabac Company, which will distribute the product.Dagnet Flores Aldana, Development Manager of CIMEX’s Wholesale Division, explained that they traditionally commercialize rum brands such as Caney and Varadero as well as the Cubita coffee although they are now promoting the sale of charcoal, mainly in Europe.

I think this is a great idea for Cuba since their plans to rise the economy of the country have been working slowly. Cuba's economy needs to grown in order to get better and by making these plans to create new products and export them, it will be a lot of help. The creation of this new rum is good since Cuba's rum is very demanded in Europe and people enjoy them very much. Also in Canada, the Cuban rum is very well enjoyed also. To me, Cuba should stay creating new projects and working on their economy and also on their government system. Cuba needs all the help possible to flow and for its economy to grow more. If Cuba keep these plans and projects, then they will have an economy boost and rum has always worked out well for Cuba so i hope they keep it up.

Cuban economy.. Blog #10

The Cuban economy is facing some current changes for the better of it. The country maintains as a communist country but more jobs are being created and prices on food was said to be dropped a bit. Cuba has been facing communism since 1959 when Fidel Castro took over the country. Ever since 1959, all the people who owned businesses and farms were basically kicked out of their property and soon they fled from the country. The government took power of all the businesses and farms in Cuba and lucky were the people who were able to leave the country.
Soon enough after that, Castro became affiliated with all the other communist countries to make trades with them. In 1980, United Stated allowed Cuba to send people over, and what Castro did was clean all the jails in Cuba and send all the criminals to this country. That was called the boat-lift. All those Cubans came to this country and started taking over Miami and also the Tampa area.
Cuba's economy grew more since they got rid of all those people and were getting most of their supplies from USSR. Cuba participated in many wars that they had no business in going to but Castro obviously does not care about his people, so he sent many soldiers to Nicaragua, Angola, and Ethiopia. Many Cubans were killed and tortured in those countries, which was completely unnecessary but like I said, Castro does not care about his people. Recently with his "sickness", his brother Raul took over the country and has been the president for the past two years. Since Fidel's illness, nothing has been known about him, other than what Raul says on TV. Raul has made some smarts move towards the economy of Cuba and its well being. President Obama has gotten in touch with him and they have discussed some issues between the countries and now a couple of things have changed. The economy of Cuba now is slowly growing, and hopefully soon it will open up with USA and open the embargo so that the two countries will make trades.
Hopefully everything works for the best of both countries and each country can enrich from this deal.

Cuba's economy.. blog #9

Cuba has plans of opening new farms to make the economy better. Cuba knows that opening more farms will increase the jobs, make the food cheaper, and also increase the agriculture in the country. Cuban Government also said that they will be opening more cigar factories in the the city areas so that the production of cigars will increase and also it will create more jobs as more cigar roller will be needed. The Cuban Government also stated that they will be reopening the sugar canes farms and factories as the demand for sugar canes has grown tremendously in the last ten years. Another plan that the Government has and it is already working on is making more hotels and tourists resorts as the tourism in Cuba has grown in the past five years. Cuba is making more accommodations for tourism. These are all plans that will make the economy increase very much and also create more jobs and attract more people. The economy has lightly increase and these changes that will be made will make Cuba's economy increase even more. Of course as we all know everything belongs to the government and it will control everything. The people will probably stay at minimum wages and hoping for a better, free day. This project that Cuba is working will take approximately from 5 to 10 years.

I found this information in the internet and magazines.

Cuba's economy.. blog #8. Cuba's new plans

Cuba came out with an ambitious project to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms to try to reverse the country's agricultural decline and make better its chronic economic woes.
The five-year plan calls for growing fruits and vegetables and raising livestock in four mile-wide rings around 150 of Cuba's cities and towns, with the exception of the capital Havana.

The island's authorities hope suburban farming will make food cheaper and more abundant, cut transportation costs and encourage urban dwellers to leave bureaucratic jobs for more productive labor.
But the government will continue to hold a monopoly on most aspects of food production and distribution, including its control of most of the land in the communist-run nation.
The pilot programmed for the project is being conducted in the central city of Camaguey, which the Cuban agriculture ministry has said eventually will have 1,400 small farms covering 52,000 hectares (128,490 acres), just minutes outside the town.
The farms, mostly in private hands but also including some cooperatives and state-owned enterprises, must grow everything organically, and the ministry expects they will produce 75% of the food for the city of 320,000 people, with big state-owned farms providing the rest.

Found this information on the internet and newspapers.

Cuba's economy.. blog #7

Cuba's tourism has incredibly increased in the past two years. This was by the new laws and accommodations that Cuba made for tourism. The tourist in Cuba grew in the past two years by approximately 8%. Cuban Tourism Minister Marrero Cruz said that the biggest source market of tourists to the island remains Canada, with 900 thousand vacationers reported so far, followed by the UK and Spain, which held a significant increase in recent months. Marrero said that in the current year Cuba completed some two thousand new rooms in the major tourist centers of the country, although the fundamental weight was concentrated in the capital.
Over 60 percent of products marketed in the network of hotels and other accommodation, is of national origin, said the official, who noted that Cuba's tourism industry employs around 200 000 workers.
Development strategy, which began this year and runs through 2015, provides for new investments in Guardalavaca, Cayo Coco, Varadero, Trinidad and Havana.
For that period, Cuba will also work towards the creation of golf courses.
Also it will prioritize the training of new methods, which means turning each hotel, restaurant, or establishment into a tourism school, and its best managers and specialists in teachers who are responsible to train the generations that will continue developing the sector tourism.
I think this is great idea for Cuba because by making all these new accommodations, the country will be able to attract more people and also make the tourists feel more comfortable and happy about spending their vacation in Cuba. Cuba's economy has slowly increased a bit due to these new laws and changes. Tourism takes the biggest part in Cuba's economy, therefore it is very important for Cuba to take steps to improve what gives them the biggest percentage of their money. Tourism in Cuba will keep growing if Cuba keep taking steps towards improving the facilities and accommodations for tourists. This is very smart and productive for the Cuba economy. I hope you liked and enjoyed the blog, and learned something from it. I found this information on google.com and mostly on the newspaper (Rebelde from Cuba).

Cuba's economy.. blog #6

The Cuban state has experienced a growth in demand for wages, social security, and subsidies, imported goods have been shortened,such as food, and other goods. Cubans have to stand in long lines to obtain limited amount of food supplied. Most needed items cannot be obtained with pesos and were obtained only on the black market with U.S. dollars. Inflation resulted because the government kept making more pesos, even though there were almost no goods available. In order to restore the value of the peso, a program was initiated to reduce the excessive amount of money in circulation. Part of this program was that the government increased the prices of many consumer goods and services, and also created a new tax law, and ended subsidies to businesses that were not economically successful. While these changes occurred, it increased the difficulty of daily living for the average Cuban, but the government have gradually restored the value of the peso.
Before 1993, the U.S. dollar, even though illegal, was used widely on the black market to obtain necessary goods for daily survival. In 1993, the dollar was legalized and Casas de Cambio, (houses of exchange) were established to exchange pesos and dollars. Cuba has created a dual system—a dollar economy and a peso economy—that has certain places where pesos can be used and others where the convertible pesos only are accepted. Since 2005 The US dollar stopped circulating in Cuba and now it is exchanged for the Cuban convertible peso. The Cuban pesos have always been very unstable which is very hard for the Cuban people because they get paid very low and the Cuban pesos lose more value every time a change is made in the currency of Cuba.
Since 1993, foreign banks had been allowed to do business in Cuba to supply financial services such as insurance, foreign commercial investments, and savings accounts. In 1997, a new central bank, the Banco Central De Cuba, was created to supervise and regulate Cuba's growing banking sector. The old bank, Banco Nacional De Cuba, had performed both the roles of central bank and state-owned commercial bank, but would now operate only as a commercial bank. Nevertheless, a very narrow sector of the Cuban population requires banking services. Very few people earn enough money to be able to invest or save.
Hope this information is useful for whoever reads it. Hope you learn something from it. I found this information in a research through google.com and a couple of magazines and newspapers.


I know this has nothing to do with macroeconomics but since we are talking about certain countries i would like to add something else about Cuba. Cuba is very well known not only for their cigars and rum but also for their salsa music along with guaguanco, timbales, charanga, bolero, cha cha cha, danzon, and many other types of music that are very famous among Latin people and people who are interested in Spanish music. Also, Cuba is very famous for baseball since they are the best in the world with the most Olympics won, and the most world championships won in baseball way ahead of any other country like Japan, Korea, USA or Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. Also boxing, which Cubans are the best amateur boxers in the history of boxing with the the highest world championships, and Olympics gold, silver, and bronze medal counts, and volleyball which the females are also the best in the world with the most medals in Olympics and world championships. Below I posted some videos for your entertainment. Again i repeat, i know this has nothing to do with macro but i thought it would be cool for whoever does not know, to find out. Enjoy...

Cuba's economy. Blog #5 The banking system in Cuba and Cuba's monetary system

Cuba's main bank is The central bank of Cuba. The bank's purpose is:
* To issue the national currency and seek for its stability.
* To contribute to the macroeconomic balance and orderly development of the economy.
* To keep custody of the country’s international reserves.
* To propose and implement a monetary policy which allows to attain the economic goals established by the country.
* To ensure normal internal and external payment operations.
* To dictate mandatory regulations.
* To exercise the functions related to the discipline and supervision of the financial institutions and representative offices authorized to establish themselves in the country and of any other entrusted to it by the laws.

As you can see the banking in Cuba is quite different than the banking in basically almost the rest of world. Since the country is a communist the country, the state remains with control of everything. Cuba has eight commercial banks. The people in Cuba don't save money in the bank because it is so controlled by the government that a person could go to jail for many years if this person has a lot of money saved, since the government knows this is not possible because the employees in Cuba get paid very low. These are the eight commercial banks in Cuba:
* Banco de Crédito y Comercio (BANDEC) (Credit Bank)
* Banco Popular de Ahorro (BPA)(Popular savings Bank)
* Banco Financiero Internacional (BFI)(International Financial Bank)
* Banco Internacional de Comercio S.A. (BICSA)(International commerce bank)
* Banco Metropolitano S.A.
Cuba's investment bank is Banco de Inversiones S.A.



This is the credit and commercial bank. Banco de Crédito y Comercio (BANDEC) was created as a commercial bank. It holds a General License granted by the Central Bank of Cuba , which empowers it to carry out universal functions inherent to commercial banking in operations in the national territory and abroad.
BANDEC distributes its services by means of a network of over 200 branches, completely automated, located throughout the whole country. Another way the bank does its distribution is a remote interconnection system, called Virtual-BANDEC, which allows customers to have access to their account and contract other services from their computers without physical presence at the bank.

The monetary system of Cuba is a dual-value decimal based system, with the primary unit of Cuban money being called the Peso. There are two separate types of money flowing in Cuba.That is the National Cuban Peso and the Cuban Convertible Peso. The Cuban Convertible Peso, also called the chavito, is used to exchange the dollar for it since the U.S. dollar stopped circulating in Cuba. Cuban citizens are paid their salaries in the Cuban Peso, and it is this money in which goods and foods are traded. The exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the Cuban Convertible Peso is officially 1 to 1. In Cuban pesos it would be 28 pesos for 1 USD.
The peso lost value due to the United States embargo against Cuba and the suspension of the sugar quota. Cuban money like most communist countries has no currency value outside the country.
I found this information on Google and the Miami herald. I thought this would be an interesting topic since we talked about banks and money in the class. Since the money in Cuba has no value outside the country and Cuba uses another type of money that the USD is converted to, i thought this might interest the person that reads this blog. Economy is Cuba is a very interesting topic from my viewpoint since it is so different from the other countries because everything is controlled by the government. I thought it would also be interesting to talk about the Banks in Cuba, so i hope this information feeds your knowledge a bit.