This is followed on the list by a music marketing company and the Rensol International Economic Association
14ymedio, Madrid, 27 November 2024 — As of the end of September, Ciego de Ávila had exported goods and services worth 22.3 million dollars at the official exchange rate (1 x 24), 535,112 million pesos. There is satisfaction with the amount, which represents 86.9% of what was expected, since, although no one dares to say that there will be global growth at the end of the year, expectations are more closely met. In November 2023, foreign sales only accounted for 66% of the target.
The provincial newspaper Invasor celebrates this Wednesday the results, in which the sale of medical services and the music marketing company mainly stand out along with the contribution made by the Rensol International Economic Association. The three are the largest contributors to the good figures, although the amount of each one has not been specified.
These items are striking, in a province that five years ago had charcoal, honey, copper scrap and red pepper leading foreign sales.
Rensol, which mainly sells solar heaters, has become one of the most solid companies in Ciego de Avila Province. In fact, it was one of the few that was not in the red in 2022, one year after the pandemic, which was particularly hard for Cuban industries. In November 2023, Rensol signed an agreement with the Panamanian Cuex “for the export of its solar heaters and other equipment to the Caribbean.”
In November 2023, Rensol signed an agreement with the Panamanian Cuex “for the export of its solar heaters and other equipment to the Caribbean”
On that date, general manager Arley González Escalante said that after years of working in the country assembling hot water installation systems for hotels and companies, the agreement allowed him to expand the market.
“That is not achieved in one day, but we can position ourselves, meet national demand and at the same time export,” he said, although it is not yet known if these plans have already borne fruit or are expected to from now on. At the beginning of November, in a meeting of the Provincial Council, it was mentioned that this company had planned “the export of technical assistance services for renewable energy.”
As for the sale of goods, most of those that stand out are the usual ones, from charcoal of all qualities to bottled rum, cigars, honey and some fish products, such as shrimp and shark fin. They are joined by red pepper and fruit juices and pulp.
The achievements could be greater without the “resurgence of the blockade*,” the authorities maintain, who add other obstacles that supposedly derive from it, such as the lack of fuel and electricity. But they also mention other little-enunciated problems, such as “the network of internal and external obstacles [which] includes low levels of production (…) and difficulties with the release of containers and the movement of shipping companies.”
A not-so-good news that officials warn overshadows the panorama is the “imbalance in the price of coal, unfavorable for the State sector, and the insufficient entrepreneurship of some entities to manage exports.”
*Translator’s note – There is, in fact, no US ‘blockade’ on Cuba, but this continues to be the term the Cuban government prefers to apply to the ongoing US embargo. During the Cuban Missile Crisis the US ordered a Naval blockade (which it called a ‘quarantine’) on Cuba in 1962, between 22 October and 20 November of that year. The blockade was lifted when Russia agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from the Island. The embargo had been imposed earlier in February of the same year, and although modified from time to time, it is still in force.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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