US announces new easing of limits on travel, trade with Cuba

(Archive / Wikimedia Commons)

WASHINGTON DC, September 18th, 2015 (EFE) The U.S. government announced Friday a new easing of the limits on travel and trade with Cuba, which includes the authorization, under certain conditions, of offering telecom services, opening bank accounts and doing business on the island.

“The regulations published today are designed to support the emerging Cuban private sector,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said in a statement, when announcing the new measures together with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

For his part, Lew said that these regulations, which are added to a previous easing of sanctions announced last January, and which will take effect next Monday after they are published in the Federal Register, reflect the “commitment” of the government of U.S. President Barack Obama to “promote constructive change for the Cuban people.”

The announcement comes just before Pope Francis, who played a key role in bringing Cuba and the U.S. closer together last December, visits the two countries.

With the new rules, U.S. companies with the appropriate authorization will be able to establish a physical presence in Cuba and hire Cuban workers, as well as offer loans.

From now on it will also be easier for airlines and passenger ships to get authorization for making trips to Cuba, while limits on remittances have been eliminated.

“These are the most comprehensive expansion in U.S. trade and investment regulations with Cuba in decades,” John Kavulich, head of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, an organization of American companies, said.

Meanwhile, Verizon announced Thursday that it will be the first U.S. company to offer roaming services for mobile phones in Cuba.

Last week, Obama renewed for another year the so-called Trading with the Enemy Act which imposes the economic embargo on Cuba, in order to maintain his executive authority to ease sanctions on the island as part of the normalization process.

The reenactment of that law “maximizes the president’s flexibility to administer the embargo on Cuba and authorize certain transactions,” a high U.S. official told EFE.

The process of rapprochement initiated last December has led to the reestablishing of diplomat relations, broken off since 1961, with the reopening in July of the respective embassies in Washington and Havana.

On Thursday, the previous chief of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, Jose Cabañas, presented Obama with his credentials as ambassador to the United States.

Cabañas is the first Cuban ambassador in Washington since Ernesto Dihigo Lopez de Trigo, who was called home from the mission for consultation indefinitely in 1959, less than two years before diplomatic relations were terminated in 1961.