Vermont signs trade pact with Cuba

The Cuban food marketing and import company ALIMPORT and the U.S. state of Vermont have signed a two-year memorandum of understanding to promote the sale of foodstuffs to the socialist Caribbean nation, as reported in the Cuban newspaper Granma May 4.

In the last three years, new Cuba-United States trade relations led to Cuban purchases of $1.2 billion worth of U.S. goods.

Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont and Pedro Alvarez, ALIMPORT president, signed the agreement May 3 in Havana for the purchase of products from Vermont, including livestock, milk and apples.

Jeffords said that he will do everything within his power “to lift the trade embargo and promote closer relations between our two peoples and our two governments” by opposing Washington’s economic, trade and financial restrictions against Cuba. Currently there is a ban on Cuban exports to the U.S.

Alvarez said recent restrictive measures imposed by the White House ignore the will of the U.S. Congress, which has authorized sales of food items to Cuba.

Since December 2001 Cuba has imported more than 4.176 metric tons of U.S. foodstuffs including bread, wheat, yellow corn, milled and paddy rice, chicken, soy beans, and corn meal and has made punctual payments of more than $1.188 billion.

The imports received by Cuba come from 37 of the 50 states in the U.S. where ALIMPORT maintains links with more than 4,000 companies.

In other Cuba trade relations, on April 28-30, businesspersons from 200 Venezuelan companies visited Havana with President Hugo Chavez Frias and signed contracts worth over $412 million, which will create over 100,000 new jobs in Venezuela, according to Granma.