The country relaxed a group of rules, measures and regulations in relation to foreign investment in the trade sector. The new policy conceives retail marketing under the modality of joint ventures and in the case of wholesale trade, the creation of joint ventures with 100% foreign capital is authorized.
The technical and development director of the Industrial Products and Services Marketing Group, Raúl Delgado Rodríguez, explained that the policy seeks to create and encourage wholesale and retail markets, not only for economic lines destined for the population, but also for intermediate goods that allow the reactivation of the economy.
As a result of the approval of the policy and in a period of two weeks, the OSDE has served more than 16 foreign entities with manifest interest and another group of companies waiting to be served is registered, the manager pointed out:
“We exchange with investors from countries as diverse as Vietnam, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Russia; Spain, Italy and India. In South America we also met with businessmen from Argentina and Uruguay”.
In business forums promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment together with the Chamber of Commerce of the Republic of Cuba, the company ALBUS S.A, belonging to the OSDE, marketer of industrial products and services, launched six projects in its portfolio. With these, the establishment of fabric markets, wholesale and retail distribution of economic line goods, as well as logistics operations of dry and refrigerated foods, among others, is sought.
Delgado Rodríguez announced that there are some fairly immediate projects, “a platform with electronic sales similar to the Katapulk and Supermarket23 modality is being set up with the advantage that all the food and products to be marketed are in the country and thus avoid the importation of goods. ” He added that they are working on another project for wholesale marketing.
“I am talking about Gran Ferretero S.A, the first joint venture approved by the Ministry of Domestic Trade and which should start operations before the end of 2022. A company for the marketing of hardware items in its broadest concept and of materials from the building. This entity will allow MSMEs to acquire resources and products for the development of their enterprises”.
Delgado Rodríguez pointed out that since the conception of the policy, the integration of national production has always been conceived and even includes the modality of pre-financing of some productions by the foreign part.
“In each of the negotiations we have made clear Cuba’s interest in inserting the national industry into these projects and it has not been a matter of conflict at all. All entrepreneurs show their agreement to include national productions in their projects and that will allow them to lower costs in the transportation of goods”.
The new legal provisions will make it possible to link the different actors in the economy with foreign companies. It will be one more opportunity for the Cuban economy to reactivate and in the future there will be, in the Cuban market, a greater presence of a group of lines.
(Taken from Rebel Radio)