Several months after U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans to lift the United States’ 50-year-old trade embargo with Cuba, the U.S. Agency for International Development has given no indication as of yet that it intends to set up shop in the Caribbean country.
Yet even as U.S. aid officials mull their options in Cuba, the country’s long-standing foreign aid donors seem keen to step up their engagement with Havana — an apparent statement of confidence in President Raul Castro's market-driven economic reforms.
“We decided to be in Cuba because we have a commitment to the people there,” Francisco Quesada Benavente, adviser to the secretary-general for international development of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation told Devex. “As we have more economic resources, the idea is to increase our economic commitments to them.”