Above: the Melia Cohiba hotel in Havana
By the Cuba Journal staff
Is now the time to invest in Cuba?
The answer is yes, but with conditions; investment will take time to materialize, it seems.
An event this week at the Brookings Institution, “Rethinking Cuba: New opportunities for development,” assembled high-level Cuba experts to look at the prospects for the country’s economy as the US and Cuba normalize relations.
While Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Stefan Selig pointed to growing developments in Cuba, from new charter service to the entry of Airbnb, he said the process of actually normalizing ties would “be evolutionary and deliberative.”
So what about financing investment?
For one, the country’s massive diaspora in the United States remains an “essential financer of new investments, particularly in tourism,” according to Brookings.
“But the fact that Cuba remains outside the Bretton Woods international financial institutions is a major obstacle, andHavana must decide when (not if) to join those institutions,” according to Brookings Nonresident Fellow Richard Feinberg.
Watch a full video of the event here:
