CUBA’S economic growth is less than two per cent this year and remains eight percentage points below pre-pandemic levels, while production in sectors such as agriculture, mining and manufacturing was further behind, Economy Minister Alejandro Gil said on Saturday.

Speaking before the country’s parliament, Gil said the primary sector, which includes agriculture, mining and other basic production, was down 34.9 per cent compared with 2019, while manufacturing was off 20 per cent. A third sector that includes services such as tourism, communications and education was down 4.9 per cent.

Cuba, heavily dependent on food, fuel and other imports, largely blames U.S. sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic for more than a 50 per cent decline in its export earnings, which are needed to purchase imports, while admitting that market-oriented reforms have moved too slowly in the Communist-run country.

Gil said export earnings so far this year were $1.3 billion, 35.7 per cent of what had been expected, while imports were $4.4 billion, also well below the Cuban government’s forecast.
The minister said inflation was raging at a 45 per cent clip this year, on top of last year’s 39 per cent jump, a figure many economists say underestimates the rate as it does not adequately account for a growing informal market driven by scarcity.

Cuba has resorted to increased price controls to slow inflation, with little success to date, while conceding that other factors are driving up prices, such as low productivity and output.
“If there is no supply and production, we will not achieve effective price control,” Esteban Lazo Hernandez, the president of Cuba’s parliament, said during a session earlier this week.

Gil said the crisis, which has left residents reeling, protesting and leaving the island nation, was “complicated,” but he added that the government was working on solutions.
“The gradual recovery of the Cuban economy has not yet reached the necessary pace,” he said. “Growth (this year) is very light at 1.8 per cent and also asymmetric. In other words, it does not occur in productive sectors.” (Reuters)

Latin American migrants holding informal jobs hamper their integration
–report says

MIGRANTS in Latin America are more likely to work in informal jobs despite having higher qualifications compared to native workers, hindering their integration, a joint report by three international organizations showed on Friday.
Over 50 per cent of migrants in the region are likely to find informal work, the study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) showed.

That trend has been registered in at least half of the 12 countries analysed.
Migrants tend to end up with more temporary contracts and longer shifts, working 50 hours or more per week, than native labourers, 45 per cent of whom work informally on average, the report added.
The poor quality of jobs found by migrants reveal a failure to take advantage of the opportunities that migration can bring to these countries, the report said.

It noted that in the last 10 years, only Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and the Dominican Republic have implemented special permits and visas to regulate the situation of immigrants.
Migrant women tend to be more educated than migrant men, the report said, but added that “the proportion of working-age male migrants who are employed exceeds that of female migrants by more than 27 percentage points.”

Mexico is the country with the second lowest proportion of migrants relative to its total population, with about 66 per cent born in the United States and most of them children of Mexican citizens who returned to the Latin American country.
Mexico, however, is home to the precarious smuggling of migrants en route to the United States, which ended in notable tragedies in recent years. (Reuters)