Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Odds and ends

  • In case you missed it in the post below, the CIA is estimating Cuba’s 2006 economic growth at 11.1 percent.

  • With tourist visits down 3.6 percent last year, Cuba created a new unit to monitor the tourism sector and to recommend measures “to improve the competitiveness of Cuban tourism products and destinations,” the minister of tourism said. It would be amazing if this group could affect exchange rate policies that make Cuba more expensive, especially to those exchanging dollars. But maybe they will convince someone to invest in road signs on Cuban highways.

  • Another roundup on the economic debate in Cuba, this one from the Herald.

  • Reuters on migration issues: 16,312 Cubans entered the United States without a visa last fiscal year, 4,825 by sea and 11,487 by crossing the Mexican border. And as anticipated, the U.S. consulate in Havana fell short of the goal of 20,000 visas stipulated in the migration accords.

1 comment:

leftside said...

Any idea why the CIA adjusted their GRP estimate up so much - to be almost in line with what the Cuban authorities claimed? They had an earlier estiamte of 7.5% for 2006. I guess we can assume the CIA analysts substantially agree with the new method Cuba uses to compute its GDP (taking into account social production).