14ymedio, Havana, 29 March 2024 — Cuba’s state plan to expand the private sector to rescue the convalescent categories of the economy seems to give results in Las Tunas. A brand new MSME (private enterprise) of civil construction has managed to cover “legendary potholes” with its cold asphalt method, in addition to starting up a state tar factory that had been closed for 20 years. Behind the facade of AsfalTunas, however, the State continues to pull the strings.
Founded in mid-2023, in less than a year the company is already able to produce 300 tons of cold asphalt per day, a product that the owner of the company, Yiney Peña Jaime, considers of better quality than the hot asphalt used by the State. “The product made by other plants in the country is the hot asphalt that ages immediately, gets hard when exposed to contact with the sun and is much more aggressive in terms of the emission of gases,” he explains to the official newspaper Periódico 26 in a report published this Thursday.
The AsfalTunas product, on the other hand, “saves fuels and aggregates, in addition to being less harmful to the environment,” says the local newspaper.
As for the state Maintenance and Construction company (Emac), shut down two decades ago for “technological obsolescence, shortage of engines, breakage and the wear and tear of time,” the relationship with the msme and an investment – which the press does not clarify as state or private – has put it back into operation.
The “final touches” to the plant, in addition, will expand its production to more than 5,000 tons of asphalt per month. (Periódico 26)”If we review concrete results, this alliance has been satisfactory. We signed a contract in July 2023, and by the end of last year more than six thousand tons of cold asphalt were produced and executed, which allowed us to solve the road problems in eight municipalities,” Pablo Enrique Paneque Almaguer, director of the State company, told the newspaper. “They had to start from scratch. They began from practically nothing, and now they have a whole structural complex in progress,” he added in reference to the msme.
The “final touches” to the plant, in addition, will expand its pro
