Castro looks to cash in with foreign franchises

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Fri, Dec. 19, 2003

Castro looks to cash in with foreign franchises
BY NANCY SAN MARTIN
[e-mail]




CARBON COPY: Cuban musician Waldo Dominguez plays in a Mexico City version of the famous Cuban restaurant and Ernest Hemingway hangout 'La Bodeguita del Medio' as a Mexican patron eats. AP FILE/2002


Cuba is reaching for business abroad, according to a report by the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.

Cuban restaurant franchises in Shanghai, Portugal, Milan and Panama. Hotel partnerships in Mexico. A la Cubana bars in Dubai, Paris, Prague and Warsaw. Havana's famous Coppelia ice cream in Malaysia.

These are among the ventures that President Fidel Castro's government has increasingly set up overseas.

Faced with sagging foreign investments at home, Cuba is reaching for business abroad, franchising its popular restaurants, establishing coinvestments in hotels and other ventures and swapping patents and technical expertise in areas such as biotechnology for a 30 to 51 percent ownership stake, according to a report Thursday by the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
(snip)

(snip) ''It's been increasingly more lucrative for Cuban businesses to go abroad,'' said Hans de Salas del Valle, a research associate at UM's Cuban institute who compiled the report. ``Now the Cuban government is officially encouraging its own companies to go outside of Cuba where conditions are more conducive for business.''
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7526703.htm

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I'd like the Cuban "exile" Mafia in Miami to know that a lot of ordinary Americans have been learning about their terrorist attacks on Cuban hotels, restaurants, discoteques, etc. after our attention was focused on them during their imprisonment of Elián, and it will NOT be as easy for them to blow up these new Cuban enterprises without drawing immediate attention to themselves from now on.

[Voltaire99]

1. Good luck, Cuba

Whatever Cuba can do to avoid being turned into a carbon copy of Miami is in its best interests.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Reuters article on the subject

Cuba forays abroad for hard currency - U.S. study
Reuters, 12.19.03, 2:02 PM ET


MIAMI, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Through Cuban-themed restaurants, Guayabera shirts, ice cream and medicines, cash-strapped Cuba is increasingly betting on overseas franchises and ventures for much-needed hard currency, a U.S. study found on Friday.

The University of Miami said 20 percent of the communist island's 403 active business partnerships with foreigners are now incorporated or operating abroad, whether in Latin America, Africa, Asia or Europe.

"Cuba's policy of promoting overseas investments bespeaks a tacit acknowledgment that the current economic climate within Cuba is less than attractive for many firms, including those owned and run by the Cuban state itself," the university's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies said.

Cuba's gross domestic product plunged after the Soviet Union collapsed. But tourism and now new international ventures are giving Havana access to much of the hard currency it needs.
(snip/...)

http://www.forbes.com/iraq/newswire/2003/12/19/rtr1187781.html

[htuttle]

3. I wonder....

If they could find a way to get the cigars in...maybe in diplomatic bags?

Fidel's Cigar Bars™

They'd make a mint.

[Vogon_Glory]

5. No Pouch Necessary. Just Ship In The Cigars.

Diplomatic pouches won't be necessary for shipping Cuban cigars almost anywhere else in the world outside of Shrub Country. Most of the rest of the world DOESN'T have a trade embargo with Cuba.

One of the interesting surprises I had at the Guatemala City airport several years ago was finding that not only did the cigar emporium stock Fidel's finest, but also that they didn't stock cigars from anywhere else.

This was Guatemala City, Guatemala, one of the most rabidly anti-communist and anti-leftist countries in the Western Hemisphere during the 1980's and 1990's.

Incidentally, Cubana had a ticket and check-in counter there and TACA also was running flights between Havana and the Central American mainland at the time.

[Vogon_Glory]

4. Phase II For A Tightened Embargo?

I wonder if Dubya, Tom De Lay, and the CANF will try to combat the growth of these overseas franchises by attempting to criminalize the act of doing business with these businesses.

Will we see CANF and Young Republican tattletales and snitches lurking in the shadows outside these places in such cities as Paris, Mexico City, Panama City, etc. trying to determine the nationalities of their patrons and if any "un-Amurrican" Yanqui would dare to run the gauntlet?

:P :+ :crazy: :tinfoilhat: