Cuba and Russia discuss development prospects, investments, and cooperation projects

Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Ricardo Cabrisas received this May 2 the Economic Advisor to the Russian Presidency, Maxim Oreshkin, with whom he talked about future cooperation projects between the two countries.

“Russia constitutes for Cuba the second trading partner at the regional level and the fifth at the global level, with a growing trend in trade exchange since 2017, only interrupted during the period of greatest impact of the pandemic, but with a predominance of imports,” expressed the also head of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment.

Cabrisas pointed out that Russia and Cuba can serve as a gateway to the markets of the Eurasian and Latin American, and Caribbean regions, respectively.

He pointed out that exports of goods produced or assembled in Cuba, in businesses with Russian capital, could take advantage of the tariff benefits resulting from the island’s participation in regional integration mechanisms and signing agreements of partial scope and economic complementation with the countries of the region.

He also called to analyze the creation of a regular maritime service Russia-Latin America and Russia-Caribbean, considering that the island has a maritime port, air, and road infrastructure that could connect socio-economic objects inside and outside the country.

According to Cabrisas, other areas that can be considered in future Russian investment in the island would be energy, mining, agribusiness, finance, and tourism, as well as metallurgy, science, and construction.

He also said that at the next session of the Cuba-Russia Intergovernmental Commission, it is intended to sign the Bilateral Economic Agenda for the short, medium, and long term, with a new approach to enhance the effective participation of Russian companies in the National Economic and Social Development Plan of Cuba 2022-2030.

This plan includes the participation of Russian capital in projects of mutual interest.
For his part, Oreshkin assured that Russia would study a new format of relations that will allow interaction and take advantage of the existing potentialities in the Cuban economy based on new initiatives in the field of investments in potential areas.

With information from Sputnik

More: Cuba news in English, every day from The Rio Times.