From our Bureau of Socialist Priorities with some assistance from our Bureau of Socialist Social Justice
Castro, Inc. continues to pursue the goose that used to lay golden eggs for them, even though that goose is moribund and has little chance of recovering.
Yes, Castro, Inc. has a fever, and the only prescription is more apartheid hotels. Tourist numbers are way down, but hotel-building continues to move at a fast pace.
To hell with agriculture and healthcare. So what if there is a severe food shortage bordering on famine? And to hell with the lack of medicines and medical personnel as well as with decaying, crumbling filthy hospitals for Cubans. Let’s build more hotels and send more slave doctors abroad.
Its own survival is Castro, Inc.’s ONLY priority. This is very clear.
Abridged and loosely translated from Diario de Cuba
Official figures of investments in strategic sectors of Cuba during the first half of 2023 leave no doubt that the Government will maintain the trend of recent years: it cares about growing more in hotel rooms and tourist facilities than in crops and hospitals.
According to a publication by the state National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), in the first half of the current year the business and real estate services sector accounts for 10,406 million pesos of the total 41,616,003 million invested. In other words, almost a quarter of that figure.
This total investment is almost 10,000 million pesos higher than what was invested in all of 2022, when the Government allocated 32,019,000 million to all sectors on which data is published.
If we add to this the figures for hotels and restaurants, of 2,325 million, the total dedicated to the tourism services sector is much higher.
Despite the foregoing and the serious food crisis affecting Cubans, investment in agriculture and livestock between January and June 2023 was 1,090,700 million, around 10% of the most benefited sector.
The second most benefited sector is the manufacturing industry, which without including sugar production amounts to 8,873.3 million; followed by transport, storage and communications (5,442.4 million); supply of electricity, gas and water (4,761 million), and exploitation of mines and quarries (2,180.6 million).
On another spectrum, only 583.3 million were allocated to public health and social assistance; to culture and sports 730.6; to construction 777.4 million; and to education 559.8 million.
At the end of the list, fishing deserved just 244 million pesos of investment; the sugar industry 199.3; and science and technological innovation 189.7.
After analyzing this information, economist Pedro Monreal warned that this reveals “the persistence of a deformed investment structure in Cuba. Activities mainly articulated around tourism predominate, despite the notable difficulties in attracting tourists.”
Whole story HERE in Spanish
Yes, the regime’s priorities are VERY clear and its primary and overriding goal is to stay in power. Period.
And no, the usual suspects are NOT bothered by this. They’d only be bothered by the regime’s fall.