CANADA’S CONNECTION WITH ONE OF ITS FAVOURITE TOURIST DESTINATIONS, CUBA, MAY BE POISED TO REACH A NEW LEVEL — one that could be a changing market opportunity for Ontario specialty grain producers and help save the struggling Caribbean country from economic and humanitarian disaster.
This opportunity is a result of a sea change in Cuba’s constitution. In 2021, the Communist government did an about-face and started letting its citizens develop micro, small and midsize enterprises with up to 100 employees. It was a new development in the dawning of Cuba’s private sector that began back in 2011 with the approval of one-owner businesses.
This latest measure is driven by necessity. Beautiful yet beleaguered Cuba is becoming increasingly desperate for money. Long-standing U.S. economic sanctions, domestic bureaucratic mismanagement and miscalculations, Covid-19 reverberations, and a culture built around relying on the government for almost everything had made island living a mess.
The Cuban government hoped that giving the green light to private enterprises, called pequeña y mediana empresa or “mipymes,” would help turn things around economically. Even though mipymes are regulated by the Cuban government, they have the potential to open doors for entrepreneurial, profit- driven Cubans who want more than what communism has provided. This could bode well for anyone interested in doing business with them, too.