HAVANA, March 16 (Reuters) – Cuba plans to allow nationals living abroad, including in the United States, to invest in and own businesses on the island, the country’s deputy prime minister told NBC News, a policy shift that signals flexibility just days after Cuba acknowledged talks had begun with the Trump administration.
Cuba’s Oscar Perez-Oliva Fraga, who also heads the foreign commerce ministry, told NBC in an interview aired on Monday that Cuba was “open to having a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies,” as well as having a commercial relationship “with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants.”
The issue of allowing emigrants to invest in island businesses is a sensitive one for Havana’s Communist-run government, which has long viewed an often hostile segment of the exile community with suspicion.
Cubans residing on the island have been allowed to open and operate private businesses since 2021, but nationals living off the island were excluded.
More than 1 million Cubans have migrated from the island since 2021, the largest exodus since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, and a source of potential investment still largely untapped.
Cuba needs desperately to revive the island’s collapsed economy, a predicament made worse by a U.S.-imposed oil blockade and sanctions that have led to extended blackouts and shortages of fuel, food and medicine.
U.S. President Donald Trump cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba and threatened to slap tariffs on any country that sells oil to Cuba, a blow to already ailing output and investment.
Trump has in recent weeks made a series of statements, saying Cuba was on the verge of collapse or eager to make a deal with the United States.
Cuba’s deputy prime minister also told NBC that the U.S. blockade is complicating Cuba’s efforts to open its economy to foreign investment.
The Cuban government is expected to officially announce the changes in investment policy later on Monday.
(Reporting by Dave Sherwood in Havana; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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