US Trade Embargo Has Cost Cuba $130 Billion, UN Says
By Reuters
09 May 18
A United Nations agency said on Tuesday an "unjust" U.S. financial and trade
embargo on Cuba had cost the country's economy $130 billion over nearly six
decades, coming up with the same estimate as the island's communist
government.
Although many U.S. allies join Washington in criticizing Cuba's one-party
system and repression of political opponents, the United States has lost
nearly all international support for the embargo since the collapse of the
Soviet Union.
The U.N. has adopted a non-binding resolution calling for an end to the
embargo with overwhelming support every year since 1992. In a report ahead
of the vote last year, Cuba estimated total damage from the embargo at $130
billion.
"This country which welcomes us today .. is testing its own ways to face the
brutal human costs that it has sustained during an unjust blockade," the
head of the U.N.'s regional economic body for Latin America, ECLAC, Alicia
Barcena told its biennial meeting in Havana on Tuesday.
"We evaluate it every year as an economic commission and we know that this
blockade costs the Cuban people more than $130 billion at current prices and
has left an indelible mark on its economic structure," she said, without
detailing how the organization came to that estimate.
After agreeing to a historic U.S.-Cuban detente in 2014, former U.S.
President Barack Obama eased the embargo, which was fully put into place in
1962. But U.S. President Donald Trump last year tightened travel and trade
restrictions again. Only the U.S. Congress can lift it in full.
"Despite the difficulties the Cuban economy is faced with, particularly due
to the intensification of the blockade imposed on Cuba... we will continue
to focus on the development goals set," Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel
said in his opening remarks at the meeting, attended also by U.N.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Cuba's Soviet-style, centralized economy has grown just 2.4 percent on
average per year over the past decade, official statistics show, much less
than the 7 percent annual expansion the government has estimated it needs in
order to develop.
Cuba hoped market reforms introduced in the last decade would boost growth,
but they have so far borne mixed results.
The ruling Communist Party earlier this year admitted implementation had
been harder than expected.
ECLAC will support Cuba's reform program, Barcena said.
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