Simons Chase 
According to a report by Reuters, a statement issued by Cuba’s Council of Ministers this week said Economy Minister Marino Murillo explained to Council members the country’s economic situation and restrictions being adopted for the rest of the year, without giving details. The restrictions apply to some state firms and joint ventures and include reductions … Read more
Cuba made its first US soyoil purchase in more than five years this month with the purchase of 7,600 tonnes, according to the US Department of Agriculture. The transaction made headlines because the trend in exports from the US to Cuba has been declining since it peaked in 2008. Also, drought and heavy rains in … Read more
Cubans are incredibly creative people, and most Cubans enjoy making music in just about any setting. For Cubans, music has a physical dimension as the mastery of a craft but there is also a metaphysical dimension that is a cultural connection to an eclectic blend of histories and influences stretching back hundreds of years. Turn … Read more
Reading Richard Feinberg’s book, Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy, reminds me of the phrase, “Sometimes it’s better to be approximately right rather than exactly wrong.” This point was driven home for me in the collapse of LTCM (run by two Nobel Prize-winning economists) – and provides an interesting counterpoint to Feinberg’s use … Read more
Learning some Spanish before traveling to Cuba will greatly enhance your experience by exposing you to aspects of Cuban culture that you would otherwise miss if you could not communicate directly with Cuban people. Poetry contains essential elements of culture and lots of vocabulary that is likely missing in structured language learning tools. Plus, encoding … Read more
Prior to the 1959 revolution, US companies played a leading role in Cuba’s telecom market. In 1949, AT&T and US conglomerate International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) installed an undersea cable between Cuba and Florida to carry telephone and telegraph traffic between the two countries for the next 40 years. On the eve of the revolution, … Read more
On April 22, 2016, one of US President Obama’s efforts to relax restrictions of the Cuban embargo included the removal of an import restriction for HTS 0901, otherwise known as coffee, originating from Cuba. It didn’t take long for coffee entrepreneurs to understand the branding potential of an island nation with a long history of … Read more
John Hemingway is an American writer and translator living in Montreal. His memoir, Strange Tribe (Lyons Press, May 2007), describes the love/hate relationship and the striking similarities between his father, Dr. Gregory Hemingway, and his grandfather, Ernest Hemingway. Ernest lived much of his adult life in Cuba and eventually became a fixture of Havana. He … Read more
President Obama, Pope Francis, and the Rolling Stones have all visited Cuba in the past year, and many US consumer goods companies want to be next. As Cuba begins to liberalize its economy, the country’s population of 11 million people and GDP of $82 billion are increasingly attractive. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) analyzed the … Read more
Cuba announced yesterday the next step in its economic transition by allowing private businesses to have legal status. Previously, the communist government permitted individuals to operate as self-employed workers under several hundred clearly-defined roles such as taxi driver. The latest announcement will likely take months to become law. “Private property in certain means of production … Read more
