Representatives of fifty companies from Russia They are exploring business and investment possibilities on the island starting yesterday in Havana, a new sign of the willingness of both governments to strengthen their “strategic association.”
“You can appreciate (…) the great participation of the Russian businessman, who responds to the policy that we have established between both countries,” the Cuban Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Ricardo Cabrisas, told reporters during the opening of the Cuba-Russia Economic-Business Forumwhich will be in session until next Friday.
The two countries announced at the end of December their intention to fto strengthen their “strategic partnership” by 2023.
The Presidential Commissioner for the Rights of Russian Entrepreneurs, Boris Titov, stressed that the visit of the President Miguel Diaz-Canel to his country at the end of November – when he met with his counterpart Vladimir Putin – opened up “great possibilities for Russian businessmen” and the development of “joint projects”.
The forum, which brings together representatives of 52 Russian companies and 106 Cubanprecedes a meeting of the Cuba-Russia Business Commission, in which Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko will participate, according to Cuban sources.
This alliance “may have a effective participation in the economic and social development plans of Cuba until the year 2030,” said Cabrisas.
Díaz-Canel, whose country is facing the worst economic crisis in thirty years, with a acute shortage of food, medicine and fueltraveled to Russia as part of an international tour that also took him to Algeria, Turkey and China.
In 2022, the Commercial exchange between Cuba and Russia reached 450 million dollarsa figure that tripled that of 2021, said in the forum the new commercial representative of Russia in Cuba, Sergei Baldin, who began his duties on the island this week.
Baldin specified that 90% of that total were sales of oil and soybean oil to Cubawhich exports rum, coffee and tobacco to Russia.
