Thanks to rising oil prices, the Castro dictatorship is enjoying hefty profits from their slave labor trade.
Cuba trades doctors for dollars
Cuba is turning a tidy profit on other nations’ crude oil.HAVANA, Cuba — “$100 a barrel oil in sight,” read a recent headline in Granma, Cuba’s communist party newspaper, and not long ago, such news would likely have been followed by hand-wringing admonitions to conserve electricity or brace for transportation cuts and rolling blackouts.
Not anymore.
In today’s Cuba, climbing oil prices are channeling much-needed cash into government accounts, even though the island is years away from commercially developing its own offshore reserves or becoming a significant energy exporter.
Instead, Cuba is turning a tidy profit on other nations’ crude.
Over the past decade, in a feat of political and diplomatic ingenuity, Cuba’s leaders have transformed the country from a place hurt by high oil prices into one that rides their rise straight to the bank. Through service agreements that send Cuban doctors, nurses and other skilled professionals to energy giants like Venezuela, Angola and Algeria, the Cuban government is compensated on a sliding scale pegged to the price of oil.
The exact terms of those service contracts have not been made public, but the basic formula is that when energy prices go up, Cuba earns more. Last year, the island accumulated a $3.9 billion trade surplus, and services — such as health care — accounted for $9.4 billion out of $13.6 billion in total export revenue, according to the government’s National Statistics Office. Those earnings now dwarf Cuba’s traditional export commodities, such as sugar and nickel.
The added revenue is helping to ease the cash shortage that forced the Castro government to freeze accounts of foreign businesses operating in the country and defer payments on its estimated $20 billion in foreign debt. It has also provided a cushion to Cuban authorities at a time of economic tumult, as 500,000 state workers — 10 percent of the island’s workforce — are due to be laid off or reassigned in the coming months.
Besides the immoral and vile act of trading humans for cash, this clearly illustrates the folly behind the argument that doing business with the regime will help bring democracy. In essence, they are arguing that we should feed the monster in the hopes that some crumbs will fall from its mouth and a few hungry Cubans get a morsel.
Truly a recipe for freedom and liberty.
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