Italy sees ‘huge potential’ in privatized trade with Cuba

Italy’s deputy Foreign Minister Mario Giro and Vice Minister for Economic Development Carlo Calenda will head a trade mission to Cuba, July 6-8, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced in Rome this week. Renzi met with Cuban President Raúl Castro on May 10.

The main topics for discussion will be agrobusiness, mechanical engineering and tourism.

[For background on Cuba-Italy trade relations on Progreso Weekly, click here.]

“Our objective is to exploit the potential of developing our presence in Cuba by becoming part of the privatization program announced by the government of the island,” Calenda told the press in Rome.

“On our next trip we shall reopen the Italian Trade Agency’s office in Havana to support our companies interested in evaluating opportunities with Cuba.”

“The priority areas on which we focus are the agro industry and mechanics. There is a huge potential there because [the Cubans’] productive systems are obsolete. Another sector that has attracted our interest is tourism, which has already experienced a partial privatization.”

“What we shall do in July,” Calenda disclosed, “is to create business associations with the aim of preparing the ground for the interested parties.”

“Six months ago, we organized a mission to Cuba with 100 companies and signed a series of agreements, including a tourism partnership and an agreement for cooperation in the field of restoration,” the vice minister said.

Specifically, the agreement on restoration provides grants for Cuban students to restore Old Havana and for Italian art experts to restore the sketches for the monumental bronze statues in Havana’s Capitol building designed in the 1920s by Angelo Zanelli, an Italian architect from Brescia.

“We’re talking about eight statues about 20 meters tall whose sketches were in the basement of the [Italian] Ministry of Culture. The first four sketches have already been restored and on our next trip [to Havana] we shall deliver them to the Cuban government,” Calenda said.

The restoration work is being accomplished by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism (MIBACT), whose secretary, Francesca Barracciu signed a memorandum of agreement with Eusebio Leal, historian of Havana, on May 5.

On another subject, Italy “is committed to support Cuba’s request to quickly close the deal on the debt to the Paris Club,” Calenda told the media.

“It is a very important agreement because it would allow the island to secure medium- and long-term loans. It would also permit SACE [Insurance Services for Foreign Trade] and SIMEST [Italian Society for Businesses Abroad] to finance the projects of our companies.”

The Paris Club is an informal group of wealthy European creditors. Estimates of Cuba’s debt to the club range from $18 billion to $22 billion. Cuba stopped servicing the debt in 1987, alleging “interference” in its domestic affairs by some of the creditors.

Bruno Bezard, the club’s chairman and head of the French Treasury, was in Havana in March to talk about restructuring the debt. Cuba owes France $5 billion.

Increased trade is “a bet that Italy intends to place,” Italian Vice Minister Calenda summed up. “Cuba has enormous potential and is a very important country, logistically speaking. Much depends on how the country will speed up privatization. Whatever happens, we intend to be there.”

[Photo at top of Raúl Castro being greeted by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in Rome on May 10.]