Cuban officials start to increase domestic food production

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban purchases of U.S. food will fall by at least a third this year as the island slashes imports to stabilize an ever-weak economy further hammered by the global economic crisis, a top trade official said Monday.

Igor Montero, head of the state import company Alimport, calculated that the communist government would spend less than $590 million on American food in 2009 once banking, shipping and other transaction costs are included. That’s down at least 32 percent from last year’s $870 million.

Montero blamed the economic crisis, but also took a swipe at Washington’s 47-year-old trade embargo, even though it exempts food, arguing that America should begin buying Cuban products and allowing its citizens to visit the island as tourists.

“If we aren’t given more possibility to generate revenue through Cuban exports to the United States, or an exchange of visitors,” Montero said, “it’s going to be very difficult to continue to reach the levels of trade we’ve grown accustomed to.”

He said 2009 will mark the first year American food imports to Cuba have not increased since the U.S. Congress authorized direct sale of agricultural products to this country in 2000.

Because of a dispute over financing, Cuba refused to import even a single grain of rice until a hurricane caused food shortages in November 2001. After that, the U.S. quickly became Cuba’s top source of food and will retain that title in 2009, despite falling sales.

Last year Cuba spent a record of more than $710 million for U.S. agricultural products of all kinds — a figure lower than the one Montero gave because it does not include transaction costs — according to the New York-based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. That was 61 percent more than in 2007, the council reported.

The spike came as Cuba stockpiled food in the face of rising commodity prices, a strategy that backfired when three hurricanes hit the island, damaging many of the warehouses where perishable items were stored.

Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Rodrigo Malmierca said that foreign imports as a whole were down 36 percent to about $10 billion so far this year, and that about 80 percent of that was food.

Some 51 percent of imports come from the United States, he said, though Cuba’s top trading partner remains Venezuela, led by socialist ally Hugo Chavez.

In a speech kicking off a foreign trade fair east of Havana on Monday, Malmierca said “complex economic factors” have forced Cuba to delay payments to many of its foreign suppliers. But he said that the island “is ready to hold dialogues to fix that.”