Cuba seeks more than $8 billion in foreign investment

Cuba has asked international companies to invest more than $8 billion in the island as it attempts to kick-start a centrally planned economy starved for cash and hamstrung by inefficiency.

Cuban Foreign Commerce Minister Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz announced on Monday a list of 246 potential projects, from a pig farm to an auto plant, which would cost $8.7 billion to build. The menu of possible investments is a key step in a push for foreign capital that includes the relaxation of investment restrictions and the creation of a special trade zone around a deep-water port west of Havana.

"Cuba is pushing strongly to take advantage of the benefits associated with foreign investment to stimulate development," Malmierca said.

Despite the push, foreigners at Havana's International Fair, the country's main economic promotional event, described Cuba as a place that still makes investors deeply nervous. Many basic supplies are lacking, and simple decisions take weeks or months for approval from overlapping government agencies.

The Cuban government remains opaque, refusing to release basic information like current levels of foreign investment. Malmierca said that the figure could be misused by the United States, which maintains an embargo on Cuba.

The call for foreign investment is part of a 4-year-old reform process meant to energize the economy by introducing private enterprise and foreign capital into a socialist model characterized by low wages, insufficient investment, crumbling infrastructure and persistent shortages.

The country said it needs to drive foreign investment to more than $2 billion a year to help raise an economic growth rate not expected to exceed 1 percent this year.

Reform effort

It's looking to push growth to 5 percent annually, but the reform effort appears to have had few results so far.

Chinese executive George Yan said he asked in May for permission to build a $1 million plant at Mariel that would employ 100 Cubans to assemble energy-saving LED lights. Despite receiving initial approval three months later, he has not been shown potential sites for the factory or received other indications the project can proceed.

In China, he said, "This would take 24 hours."

"The Cubans have a certain fear that if they go fast they can't reverse any decision, so they prefer to go more slowly and do all the studies," he said.

Yan nevertheless said he was optimistic that Cuba would move faster in the coming year.

Malmierca said: "Many people complain about the time in which we do things, but everyone's got their own pace. We're going to do this our way, and we want to do it well."