Cuba’s purchases in the US skyrocketed to 40 million dollars in August
HAVANA, Oct. 8th. At the end of August, exports of food and agricultural products from the US to Cuba experienced an increase of 35.8%, 17.9% higher than the eighth month of 2022, which placed the Island as the 52nd market of those northern nation sales.
According to official figures from Washington and the report on the matter from the Cuba-US Economic and Trade Council, these sales closed the period at 39,913,983 dollars, above the 29,383,675 in August 2022 and the 27,656,565 in the same month of 2021.
The figure is higher than that of recent months. In July these exports closed at 32,313,837 dollars, below the more than 37 million in June, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture.
Among the products included in the Cuban shopping basket, various items that have nothing to do with a food stand out again, such as compressors and immersion heaters, as well as 1.1 million dollars in “cleaning preparations”, excavators, and tractors, second-hand, and auto parts.
Among the foodstuffs, as usual, a significant amount of chicken meat stands out, the main import volume; Pork Meat; rice; puddings; grapes; coffee; coffee extract; cookies; waffles and wafers; beer; Palm oil; hams; pasta; corn chips; yeasts; carbonated soft drinks; salt and sugar.
As has become customary in recent months, Havana did not purchase any health products and medicines.
For their part, humanitarian donations reported by the US authorities amounted to $2,735,263.
According to the Cuba-US Economic and Commercial Council, in the eight months ending in 2023, Cuban purchases in the US totaled 232,487,283 dollars, 35 million more than the 197,037,244 in the same period of 2022.
In total, since Havana began to make use of the modifications to the embargo laws put into practice by the US, in December 2001, sales have exceeded 7,136,213,649 dollars.
Although the Government and the official press keep quiet about it, the United States is today the sixth country in the world with the highest volume of exports to the Island, as revealed by the Cuban Statistical Yearbook for 2022, with figures made public by the state National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI).
According to that document, the northern neighbor exported products worth $391,296,000 to the Island in 2022, the highest figure in six years.
With such numbers, the US was placed above countries in the Latin American region with greater political ties to Havana, such as Brazil (377,815,000 dollars of exports in 2022), Argentina (347,514,000 dollars) and Mexico (347,801,000).
All exports are authorized, despite the embargo, under the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TSREEA) of 2000, passed by the George W. Bush Administration, to which Havana has resorted without pause since the end of 2001.
