| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
advertisement | ||
Tuesday February 27, 3:56 AMCuba's trade booms with China and VenezuelaHAVANA, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Cuba's trade with China more than doubled in 2006 to nearly $1.8 billion, the Chinese customs office said on Monday, as the Communist-run island prioritized its new revolutionary partners China and Venezuela.Since Cuba signed an agreement with Venezuela in late 2004 bartering and selling services for oil and also began receiving more credit from China, it has ordered all state companies to prioritize trade and investment with the two countries. China reported bilateral trade was $1.792 billion last year, up 105.4 percent from 2005 and compared with just $526 million in 2004. Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage said in January that bilateral trade with Venezuela was $2.6 billion in 2006, compared with $2 billion in 2005 and $1.4 billion in 2004. The Cuban government reported trade grew 27 percent in 2006, compared with the $9.5 billion reported in 2005, or to around $12 billion, meaning China and Venezuela accounted for more than 35 percent of all trade. Chinese appliances now adorn most Cuban kitchens and Venezuelan snacks and canned goods are on supermarket shelves. Chinese buses ply the highways and Venezuelan oil fuels them and just about everting else in the country. Cuba sends sugar, nickel and medicines to China and mainly technical assistance and medicines to Venezuela. Spain was Cuba's third trading partner in 2006 at just under $1 billion. Since the United States began more strictly enforcing its decades-old trade embargo on Cuba in 2004, always scarce economic information has become even harder to come by. Data, when provided, often differs from official to official and report to report. For the first time in many years, no information on Cuba's external finances or details on trade was provided at the annual year-end session of the National Assembly in December. However, the trend is clear. Economic growth over the last two years has been three times what it was during the first years of the century as the country finally began to put behind the crisis that followed the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, depriving it of massive subsidies and resulting in shortages of food, energy, transportation and capital. The U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), basing its reporting on government provided figures, said imports were $5.5 billion in 2004 and nontourism service income around $1.5 billion, compared with imports just over $10 billion and nontourism service revenues of more than $5 billion in 2006. "There was an increase in international reserves and a slight decrease in the foreign debt," ECLAC said, without providing details. |
|||
|
Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of Reuters Limited
|