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June 3, 2002.
Train strikes bus at railway crossing in central Cuba, killing 8
Mon Jun 3,12:57 PM ET
HAVANA - A train struck a bus at a railroad crossing in central Cuba,
killing eight people — including two boys, the leading official newspaper
said Monday.
The accident occurred in Jicotea, a town in the central province of Villa
Clara about 270 kilometers east of Havana, the Communist Party daily Granma
said. It did not say what day the accident occurred.
A preliminary investigation showed that the train, traveling from the
easternmost city of Guantanamo to Havana, struck the bus when its driver
evidently ignored the railway crossing signal, Granma said.
It said all of those killed, including the boys, ages 9 and 14, were on bus
and that one man on the train was seriously injured.
Transit accidents are the No. 1 cause of death in Cuba, with more than 700
fatalities annually, or an average of about three deaths daily, according to
National Transportation Department statistics.
European tourists at Cuba's premier resort begin using euros to pay for
their vacations
Sat Jun 1, 1:46 PM ET
VARADERO, Cuba - Tourists began using euros as an alternative to U.S.
dollars to pay for meals, hotel rooms and souvenirs at Cuba's premier resort on
Saturday in an experiment communist officials hope will draw more Europeans to
this Caribbean island.
"People will be delighted with the idea," said Marisa Barachano,
a Spaniard who heads the public relations department at the Hotel Sol Varadero,
Cuba's most popular tourist destination.
Barachano said most of her hotel's guests are Europeans who prefer to use
the common European currency rather than risk losing value by exchanging it for
U.S. dollars, which have long been welcomed here.
"We brought dollars this time," said German tourist Adrian Linder.
"But we think this is good for visitors," he said of the option to pay
with euros.
A few tourist locales in this coastal resort east of Havana began accepting
euros earlier in the week but it was not until Saturday that all major
establishments adopted the new system, although some lacked sufficients euro
coins to provide tourists with the exact change.
In most establishments, cashiers had product lists showing prices in dollars
and euros. Others featured signs showing the exchange rate — 1.11 euros to
the dollar — which will be updated monthly.
Tourism workers took courses preparing them for the change, teaching them
how to identify counterfeit euro bills and how to make pricing conversions.
Cuba to raise prices at dollar stores
Fri May 31, 2:05 PM ET
HAVANA - Struggling with a financial crisis, Cuba announced major price
increases Friday at the nation's dollar stores.
But the government promised citizens that the cost of basic foodstuffs and
other essential products will remain untouched or slightly lowered.
"Our country is adopting a series of measures to confront these adverse
factors with success," the Economics Ministry said in a statement published
Friday in Granma, the Communist Party's newspaper.
Under the measures taking effect Monday, the government will "reduce
the prices of a gamut of primary need and wide consumption products, especially
food, and increase those for a series of articles," the statement said.
The ministry gave no exact figures on how much more imported items such as
electronics, foreign cigarettes, and gasoline would cost.
But the price increases appear to target imported consumer goods —
including shoes, clothing, hair care products and audio equipment.
Slight price reductions are planned for more essential goods, including food
such as powdered milk and chicken, the most basic personal care products such as
soap, toothpaste, disposable diapers and sanitary napkins.
Written guidelines for prices have been circulating among state enterprises
and the general population in recent days, but it is unclear if the prices
changes listed are simply proposals or have final government approval.
One list calls for gasoline to increase from 75 cents to dlrs 1.05 per liter
for regular, and from 90 cents to dlrs 1.20 per liter for special.
Cuba, which imports around dlrs 600 million annually in food, says its
economy has been battered in recent months by rising world prices for the
petroleum it imports.
At the same time, international prices for sugar and nickel — two of
the island's primary exports — are down.
So is tourism, which in recent years has replaced sugar as the island's No.
1 source of hard currency, earning as much as dlrs 2 billion annually. The
Tourism Ministry recently reported a 14 percent drop in tourism during the first
quarter.
All price adjustments planned will occur in the island's dollar stores,
where Cubans and foreigners use dollars to buy products ranging from packaged
food to electronic appliances.
Selling products in dollars has given the government a way to more easily
capture the hard currency it needs to buy imported products.
According to the Labor Ministry, 1.1 million of Cuba's 4.3 million member
work force receive at least part of their salaries in U.S. currency.
Many Cubans are sent dollars from relatives living outside the country. The
influx is estimated to total hundreds of millions of dollars.
Cuba begins accepting euros in premier tourist resort
Fri May 31, 2:11 PM ET
HAVANA - Hotels, restaurants and bars in the Cuban tourist resort of
Varadero will accept euros starting Saturday in an attempt to attract more
European tourists and their powerful currency.
"You can pay here in euros as well," signs say in a number of
languages at reception desks across Varadero, a resort that generates about a
third of Cuba's estimated dlrs 2 billion in annual tourism income.
Similar signs announcing that euros were welcome were seen this week at toll
booths on the highway linking Havana with Varadero about an hour's drive to the
east.
Vice President Carlos Lage announced in March that Cuba would begin
accepting the euro in Varadero as an experiment that could be extended to other
resorts if proves successful.
Before the change, European visitors had to bring dollars to spend in
Varadero. Authorities have not disclosed whether the euro might eventually be
accepted nationwide.
Juana Lilia Delgado, head of treasury for Cuba's Central Bank, has said that
officials hope the measure will make it easier for European tourists to pay for
their vacations, while creating a new way for Cuba to capture hard currency
needed to buy petroleum and other imported goods.
The government now uses the U.S. dollar almost exclusively to buy imports
and pay other international obligations.
Cuban officials estimate more than 55 percent of tourists visiting the
island annually come from European Union (news - web sites) nations that began
using the euro on Jan. 1.
Havana conducts about 40 percent of its foreign trade with EU members, and
more than half of the mixed enterprises formed by the communist government and
foreign companies operate with capital from EU nations.
"We didn't bring euros because we didn't know," Pedro Perez of La
Coruna, Spain, who came to Varadero with his wife on their first trip to Cuba.
Varadero, with its white sands and tranquil seas, is Cuba's most developed
tourist resort. It has 44 hotels with 13,000 rooms, or more than 40 percent of
the hotel rooms nationwide.
Tourism Minister Ibrahim Ferradez reported recently that the nation's
tourism was down 14 percent during the first quarter of this year. Cuba's
tourism industry has been battered following the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the
United States that hurt travel-related businesses worldwide.
Although Cuban authorities had initially projected 2 million visitors to the
island last year, the final number was a bit less than 1.7 million, down
slightly from 2000. | 
