Cuba wins China debt reduction, new funds By Reuters

© Reuters. Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel attends a wreath-laying ceremony on the Monument to the Individuals’s Heroes at Tiananmen Sq. in Beijing, China, November 25, 2022. Alejandro Azcuy/Courtesy of Cuban Presidency/Handout through Reuters

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) – China has agreed to restructure Cuban debt and supply new commerce and funding credit to the beleaguered Caribbean Island nation after a gathering in Peking between the 2 Communist international locations’ leaders.

Cuba Economic system Minister Alejandro Gil stated the latter had additionally donated $100 million to assist the nation address fundamental items shortages and an power disaster worsened by Hurricane Ian, which decimated western Pinar del Rio province in late September.

Gil was talking in an interview with official media touring with President Miguel Diaz-Canel as he returned house over the weekend from a tour of Algeria, Russia, Turkey and China.

Chinese language commerce and funding has slowed in recent times attributable to Cuba’s failure to satisfy restructured debt funds in keeping with analysts and diplomats, a state of affairs worsened by tighter U.S. sanctions, the pandemic and home financial inefficiencies.

“We’re going to discover mutually acceptable formulation for the ordering and restructuring of money owed,” Gil stated.

Analysts estimate the debt within the billions of {dollars}, though no official figures can be found.

Cuba final reported its overseas debt in 2019 at $19.6 billion.

China is Cuba’s most necessary business associate after Venezuela, although commerce has declined from over $2 billion in 2017 to $1.3 billion final 12 months, in keeping with the Cuban authorities.

Varied funding initiatives have additionally floor to a halt.

Gil stated China had agreed to shortly full a floating dock, wind energy and photo voltaic power mission, amongst others.

President Diaz-Canel advised the official media after talks in Peking that debt was on the prime of his agenda with President Xi Jinping who sympathized with the difficulties Cuba was going via.

The Cuban president stated his Chinese language counterpart indicated “an answer should be discovered to all the issues with Cuba, whatever the debt, and that this can’t be what limits growth.”