14ymedio, Madrid, February 7, 2024 — A few hours before the start of State TV’s Round Table program, where the Minister of Tourism, Juan Carlos García Granda, was scheduled to attend, the Cuban economist Pedro Monreal asked a very direct question on the social platform X. “Could the Minister of Tourism report the rates of tourism in Cuba that justify it as the locomotive of growth?” In case the Minister had doubts about how to perform the calculation, the expert attached an image of the matrix.
Monreal, like most Cubans, wonders why the Government continues to consider tourism as “the locomotive of the Cuban economy” when there is not a single fact to support this. He asked for the figures to be made available that illustrate how much the development of other sectors is helped by investments in tourism and vice versa. Of course, if the Cuban tourism authorities have the figures, they won’t facilitate this or release them, although they keep repeating the mantra.
“Tourism cannot advance or survive without the national economy. There we include everyone who participates in some way, providing supplies and services so that operations and investments can take place,” said María del Pilar Macías, general director of Operations and Quality of the Ministry of Tourism, who accompanied García Granda and provided some generic figures.
According to her accounts, 69% of the sector’s purchases are made from the national industry. “We see the productive chain with a greater vision. It sells itself and satisfies other sectors’ needs.” The official said that there are 259 tourist facilities linked to 1,111 “productive forms,” which contain 379 private producers “who have even designed their growth to guarantee hotel facilities; that is, they consider tourism.”
Her assessment is positive, since, in addition, it avoids imports and their costs. “You get it faster and you don’t fall into the issue of shipping companies, which to get to Cuba must practically go around the world, which causes many delays,” she stressed. Among the novelties of those “chains” is the development of recycling industries, an issue that was previously ignored but that gains importance for international hotel companies, such as Meliá and Iberostar, which are subject to environmental commitments.
“We are starting a program to repl