Above: one of the new planned golf resorts in Cuba
By the Cuba Journal staff
A major new golf project could be coming to Cuba.
The island’s government announced this week the formation of a joint venture aimed at developing a large golf complex in an area east of Havana.
Cuba’s Tourism Ministry said the project was an association between the state-owned Cuba Golf and the Chinese firm Beijing Enterprises Holdings Limited.
The project will be established in the Bello Monte area.
It will mean a total of $462 million in investment, according to the government; it is the second major golf project approved by the country, following a a $350 million project to build a golf resort in Varadero.
That project, called Carbonera Club, is a partnership between the Palmares company and UK-based Esencia Hotels and Resorts.
Cuba has been slowly attempting to add degrees of liberalization to its long-closed-off economy, a policy Cuban President Raul Castro dubbed “less egalitarian but more fair.”
That was highlighted by a new foreign investment law enacted in March 2014.
A Cuban government spokesman also said this week that two similar projects were planned with companies from Spain in the next year.
One would be located in the area of El Salado, west of Havana, with the other in Punta Colarada in the Pinar del Rio province.
