Cuba says ‘doors open’ to expatriates to invest in businesses in country | Business and financial news

Cuba says it is removing barriers to U.S. businesses and other foreign investors.

It invited Cuban Americans and other expatriates living abroad to invest and own businesses on the island, saying the “doors are open” to a community that has traditionally campaigned against the communist government for tough economic sanctions.

Cuba said on Monday it was removing barriers to US businesses and other foreign investors, but noted that United States law still hinders trade and investment under a longstanding economic embargo aimed at punishing the government in Havana.

“There are no limits,” Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, who heads the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, said in an interview on state television.

Cuba needs to revive its battered economy, suffering worsened by a US-imposed oil embargo and sanctions that have led to extended blackouts and shortages of fuel, food and medicine.

The policy shift signaled flexibility just days after Cuba acknowledged it had begun talks with the U.S., and officials in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration have told reporters privately that the U.S. wants economic opening as part of any bilateral deal.

The issue of allowing expatriates to invest in island businesses is sensitive for Cuba, which is viewed with suspicion by an often hostile segment of the exile community. Most exiles are proponents of trade embargo.

Cubans living on the island are allowed to open and operate private businesses from 2021, but citizens living off the island are excluded.

Paolo Spadoni, an economist at Augusta University and author of the 2014 book Cuba’s Socialist Economy Today, called the policy change “experimental” but said Cuba should have initiated it years ago rather than “maximum pressure” from the US.

“This change could be a catalyst for deeper U.S.-Cuba economic ties, creating significant opportunities for U.S. companies even as major obstacles remain,” Spadoni said. “However, this represents an important and potentially impactful first step.”

‘Open to Capital’

Pérez-Oliva Fraga, who previously revealed some details of the plan in an interview with NBC News, said that “depending on the scope of the business”, Cubans living abroad can “participate fully in different areas of the country’s development”.

“We have reiterated on several occasions that Cuba’s doors are open to investment from the Cuban community living abroad. And when we say that, we are not just referring to small enterprises. We are also referring to the possibility of investing in large projects,” said Pérez-Oliva Fraga.

Cuba is particularly interested in investing in agriculture, he said, in the same way that Vietnamese companies produce rice in Cuba, albeit under profitable conditions, with land rights remaining in the hands of the state.

More than 1 million Cubans have emigrated from the island since 2021, the largest exodus since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, and the potential investment base remains largely untapped.

Trump has cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba and threatened to impose tariffs on any country that sells oil to Cuba, a blow to already ailing production and investment.

Trump has made a series of claims in recent weeks that Cuba is on the brink of collapse or eager to make a deal with the US. He stepped up his rhetoric on Monday, saying he expected to have the “honor” to “take Cuba in some form” and said “I can do anything” with the neighboring country.