Discurso en 8va Conferencia del CARICOM
In the name of the government and people of Cuba, we give a most warm welcome to the leaders of the Caribbean governments and to the members of the Commission and member states of the European Union, to the businessmen, academics and representatives of non-governmental organizations of both regions. Our country feels honored by the decision to hold in Havana the 8th Europe-Caribbean Conference, a regional forum for cooperation and the promotion of economic relations between the Caribbean and Europe, which today, in the conditions of a globalized world, is acquiring more significance and importance than ever.
The English-speaking Caribbean countries have been, among all the countries of our region, the most conscientious and those that have progressed the most in their efforts at integration. That effort has been neither discriminatory nor exclusive and has allowed Cuba to actively participate. We thank and admire the steadfast position of the Caribbean governments that have come to agree with our calling and desire for full integration with the nations of the Caribbean and Latin America.
This year marks the first quarter-century since four nations of the English-speaking Caribbean -- Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Guyana -- established diplomatic relations with Cuba, thus breaking the circle imposed from Washington.
Nowadays, we have diplomatic and consular relations with all the countries of the island Caribbean and our interchange is growing.
In the past year in Cuba, we have received several heads of government of the area. Keith Mitchell from Grenada, Percival Patterson from Jamaica and James Mitchell from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, who, on their respective visits, signed different cooperation agreements with Comrade Fidel Castro, President of Cuba's Councils of State and of Ministers.
Carl Marshall and Hector McClean, parliamentary leaders of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, also visited us, as did Clement Rohee, the Guyanese foreign minister.
In the middle of this year, consular relations were renewed between Cuba and the Dominican Republic. At the beginning of 1997, the Cuban capital was the seat of the meeting of directors of the Caribbean Policy Development Centre.
We attach great importance to this, and our status as a founder member of the Association of Caribbean States and as president of its Special Committee on Science, Technology, Health, Education and Culture is a source of satisfaction for us. The work of the Cuba-CARICOM joint commission draws us ever closer and lets us tackle concrete tasks to encourage economic and trade relations. The fourth meeting that has just finished shows us how much we have progressed and how much we can do.
We base our relations with the Caribbean on cooperation and not on competition.
We are stimulated by the interest in making the area into one of the world's main tourist destinations in the next century. We consider tourism as the main link for economic development and the integration of the countries making up the Association of Caribbean States. We want to work together more and more for multi-destination tourism, the training of specialized personnel, exchanges of experiences and the reconciling of tourist strategies and programs.
We are ready to continue sharing with our Caribbean brothers the fruits that the revolution has achieved in the training of human resources in health care, education, culture, sport, science and in other fields.
One thousand and ninety young Caribbeans have graduated in different higher-level and middle-level specialities up to 1997. Without any economic benefit for Cuba, our government granted 244 university scholarships to students from the Caribbean for the current academic year.
One hundred and sixty-six Cuban professionals and technicians, including doctors and healthcare personnel and sports trainers, are giving their services in different Caribbean nations.
The possibilities are greater still. In the field of health care, for example, Cuba has enough medical personnel to cover the needs of all the countries of the island Caribbean. The expenditure essential to maintain them could be contributed by the developed countries and international organizations.
Possibilities exist to increase the training of professionals and technicians in Cuba and to further promote scientific and academic exchanges between Cuban and Caribbean centres of higher education.
Caribbean entrepreneurs can find, in our country, a market of eleven million inhabitants and mutual trade of more than six million dollars a year, rising to the extent that our economic recovery is consolidated and that there is growth in tourism, which will come close to 1,200,000 visitors this year already. We have a relatively extensive industrial capability and a qualified workforce that can contribute to Caribbean economic integration. We have a stable social environment and a clear and simple legislation that offers guarantees for capital investment and assurances for the unimpeded repatriation of profits.
We do 8 per cent of our foreign trade with the island Caribbean and, with respect to 1992, mutual trade with this area has grown more than threefold. In 1996, trade with the Caribbean came to 452 million dollars. Nevertheless, this trade is concentrated in a small number of countries, it is mainly imports and our exports have little variety. The development of sea and air transport routes that could help boost trade and tourism and promote international relations is still a goal to be achieved.
After 20 years, trade among the members of the Caribbean Community does not exceed 10 per cent of total trade, mainly due to the reason indicated earlier. We must strengthen our common market and make it as easy to travel between our respective countries as it is to go to Europe or the United States.
Cubana Airlines already operates in seven countries of the island Caribbean and the flights of Air Jamaica and Air France also connect us with the region.
Cuba could become an important communications and transport centre, so necessary for the widening of trade flows.
The 8th Europe-Caribbean Conference should help to strengthen integration between the Caribbean countries and to widen and strengthen our region's relations with Europe.
We are united to Europe by, among many other reasons:
• Historical and cultural links;
• Opposition to unilateral sanctions and extrate-rritorial laws;
• A common desire to struggle against drug trafficking without denying the responsibility of users;
• The Lomé Convention, which fosters trade and provides opportunities for the Caribbean nations.
In the last century, José Martí, the forerunner of Latin-American and Caribbean independence and unity, conceived of the Antilles' independence as a retaining wall against the covetousness of the United States. Referring to one of the guarantees of independence, he foresaw the need to create foreign interests in our country, without giving rise to the definitive superiority of anyone. He added that, if any, it should always be European.
We greatly appreciate the European strategy toward Latin America and the Caribbean and we regard this meeting as expressing the desire and the common possibility of Europe and the Caribbean to strengthen and extend our economic and trade relations.
Today, 29 per cent of Cuba's mutual trade is situated in the European Union, whereas it was only 7 per cent in 1990. Forty-five per cent of international economic associations come from European Union countries and four of the main sources of tourists to Cuba are from that region.
Sixteen per cent of the tourists that the Caribbean receives come from the European Union and 18 per cent of exports from Caribbean countries that are Lomé Convention members make their way to Europe.
The Caribbean countries need access to markets that let them overcome the limitations resulting from the size of their economies and their propensity to natural disasters.
A wide international consensus exists toward trade liberalization, but this process cannot get rid of the differences in scale nor in development that exist between the countries' economies, differences that do not allow them to compete in similar conditions. The United States economy is not the same as that of the small islands of the eastern Caribbean, many of which depend on a single product.
Our country understands and supports the specific interests of the Caribbeans for the negotiations of the fifth Lomé Convention.
We think that specific preferences should be guaranteed and there must be a vision of cooperation that includes all international flows, financial assistance, investment, the transfer of technology, access to the market and an eventual debt write-off, factors that, if well directed, could promote development and social progress.
Since the collapse of the socialist bloc, Cuba has faced a very severe economic contraction and the United States took advantage of this circumstance to reinforce its economic embargo. We have experienced great material shortages -- which still persist -- that, at times, seemed to many, especially outside Cuba, insurmountable.
Important decisions were taken to slow down the economic collapse and to restart its growth, without neoliberal formulas and on the basis of a wide social consensus.
We diversified our mutual trade, increasing relations with Latin America and the Caribbean as part of the effort at integration with the region. Last year, this trade grew by 20 per cent and, today, it represents 31 per cent of all our trade.
More than 300 economic associations with foreign capital have been set up and more than 600 branches of foreign firms have opened in Cuba, 11 of which are from the banking sector.
In 1997, three free-trade zones were set up and are now operating. We are interested in promoting and increasing links with the free-trade zones established in the Caribbean area and in studying the possibilities for complementing them.
The country's main economic and social indicators speak of economic recovery, despite the reinforcing of the embargo.
GDP has grown by an average of 5.1 per cent in the past three years. Taking into account the estimates for the close of 1997, mutual trade has increased by 15.5 per cent and tourism by more than 20 per cent. For its part, the budget deficit was reduced in these three years and, today, it is 2 per cent of gross domestic product.
Reciprocal agreements on the promotion and protection of investments have been signed with 29 countries, seven of which are members of the European Union and two of CARICOM and new agreements are being negotiated with countries from both regions.
We have opened up prospects for development despite the very difficult conditions imposed on us by the economic war that the United States has unleashed against Cuba and that, to give just one example, makes it impossible to obtain flexible outside finance and forces us to develop with short-term trade financing at very high interest rates, higher than those in the world market.
The meeting that we started this morning is being held at a time in which both Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean are confronted with many threats and challenges:
• The worsening of terms of trade, which constantly devalues the price of our exportable products;
• Debt-servicing payment, which, in most Caribbean countries, comes close to 20 per cent of their exports of goods and services;
• The irrationality of the polarization of wealth;
• The technological gap;
• Protectionism through non-tariff barriers, which blocks access to markets or reduces the competitiveness of exportable products;
• Damage to the environment;
• The uncertainty that has been provoked in the economic future of underdeveloped countries by neoliberal policies and the impositions laid down by international finance institutions.
It is not possible to face up to these challenges and to reduce our weaknesses without integration. We believe in the idea of a united Caribbean, an ever more united Caribbean. We should promote, through a model of integration, the combining of the English-, Spanish- and French-speaking Caribbean into a regional economy.
Our government is animated by the most steadfast will for the integration of the region and the desire to share the future with our neighbours, a future will always be longer than the past.
The Caribbean countries are small but dignified. We are not greater but neither are we less than any nation. Faced with the challenge of a world economy that is being globalized, with developed countries that are uniting, with blocs that are being strengthened, the only alternative for our region's countries is integration. This is the only way we can survive, strengthen our bargaining power and develop.
We are separated by the same sea that unites us. Let's throw the barriers to the bottom of that sea. Let's put our unity above that sea, just as, through the centuries, our peoples have put the identity of their authentic culture.
Thank you very much.
IMPRESO
Imprenta del Comité Ejecutivo del Consejo de Ministros
1997