Cuban Minister for Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Rodrigo Malmierca, visits today the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he will hold talks with managers and entrepreneurs from several sectors.
At the headquarters of the organization, representing the interests of more than three million businesses in the northern country, the minister will be received by the president of the Chamber, Thomas Donahue, and Executive Vice President and Head of International Affairs, Myron Brilliant.
Malmierca will also hold talks with former Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez, leading the US-Cuba Business Council (USCBC), an entity established in September by the Chamber to promote business opportunities and remove barriers in the approach to the island.
Malmierca came accompanied by the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Cuba, Orlando Hernandez, and officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Central Bank, and companies from the Caribbean island, a delegation that arrived in here on Sunday, Feb. 14, for a working visit scheduled until Thursday, Feb. 18.
Hernandez told Prensa Latina yesterday that Marmierca expects to meet today with representatives of leading U.S. companies in tourism, biotechnology, machinery, and food industry, among other sectors.
According to the executive, the stay at the Chamber of Commerce will allow to perform an assessment of the current situation and determine where the main obstacles are, in a scenario marked by the validity of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed to the Caribbean nation for more than five decades.
Hernandez acknowledged that the U.S. organization has spent 15 years advocating for the end of the blockade, and stressed that its removal would bring benefit for both countries.
The Chamber has also played an important role in the process activated on December 17, 2014, to move towards the normalization of relations, he said.
That day, Presidents, Raul Castro and Barack Obama, announced the bilateral approach, after more than 50 years of distancing, as of the Washington hostile policy.
The USCBC met in Havana in November, occasion for which more than fifty major U.S. businessmen, from companies as American Airlines, Boeing, Heinz Krfat, Home Depot, Sprint, and Morgan Stanley, traveled to the island.
Then, Malmierca met with Myron Brilliant, with whom he discussed on the potentialities of the Cuban economy, and the obstacles to the bilateral trade represented by the blockade.