{"id":11578,"date":"2020-06-13T04:51:19","date_gmt":"2020-06-13T01:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/cuba-cancels-economic-fair-as-imports-plummet-2\/11578\/"},"modified":"2020-06-13T04:51:19","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T01:51:19","slug":"cuba-cancels-economic-fair-as-imports-plummet-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/cuba-cancels-economic-fair-as-imports-plummet-2\/11578\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuba Cancels Economic Fair as Imports Plummet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.maritimeprofessional.com\/images\/maritime\/w200\/adobe-stock-113765.jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Cash-strapped Cuba has canceled its annual international trade and investment fair slated for November due to the pandemic, state-run media reported on Friday, even as fallout from the novel coronavirus hammers revenues and imports.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Container traffic at the port of Mariel, responsible for 90% of containers entering the country, was down between 20% and 25% through May, compared with the same period last year, according to a shipping source with access to the data.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Cuba does not reveal key economic information in a timely manner, saying the information would be used against the country in applying U.S. sanctions.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>The country, which depends on foreign exchange to import more than 50% of the food and fuel it consumes, and raw materials and packaging for just about everything else, shuttered tourism, a key foreign exchange earner, in March and has been in partial lockdown since.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Food, hygiene and medicine shortages due largely to U.S. sanctions have become much worse, leading to waits for hours to purchase basic goods when available.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Among the Communist-led country\u2019s top five commercial partners, China reported exports to Cuba fell 55% through April compared with the same period last year, while Spain and the European Union reported exports through March down a bit less than 30% through March.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Among the Caribbean island\u2019s top 10 commercial partners, the United States reported food sales for cash, allowed under the trade embargo, were down 48% through April, while Canada reported a 17.5% decline.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Outside analysts such as the United Nations and the Economist Intelligence Unit have forecast a recession of around 4% to 6% after 0.5% growth in 2019.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the drop in gross domestic product will be around 8% to 10%,\u201d said Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank economist who teaches at Colombia\u2019s Universidad Javeriana Cali.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><em>(Reporting by Marc Frank; editing by Jonathan Oatis)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cash-strapped Cuba has canceled its annual international trade and investment fair slated for November due to the pandemic, state-run media reported on Friday, even as fallout from the novel coronavirus hammers revenues and imports. Container traffic at the port of Mariel, responsible for 90% of containers entering the country, was down between 20% and 25% &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2057,318,5098,7584,4408,4487],"class_list":["post-11578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-cancels","tag-cuba","tag-economic","tag-fair","tag-imports","tag-plummet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/11579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}