HAVANA (AFP)--Cuba this year will boost national investment to six
billion pesos ($250 million) - four times what it spent 10 years ago,
Vice President Carlos Lage said Sunday.
"We've put into effect a much bigger investment process than previous
years and of greater importance to the economy and people's lives," Lage
told the Juventud Rebelde newspaper without indicating which sectors
would most benefit from the increase.
Lage, 56, is credited with lifting Cuba from economic crisis after the
Soviet Union fell in 1991. He retained his post as one of the country's
most influential vice presidents when Fidel Castro, 81, was replaced by
his brother Raul, 76, last month.
He told the daily that the government in 2008 "will invest more than
CUP6 billion, four times what it invested between 1995 and 1998, which
was CUP1.5 billion per year."
Thanks to the increase, he said, "we'll be able to cut time and cost (of
development projects), and do everything we've been doing with much
less; which means doing more things, expanding programs with social
benefits."
Without clarifying, he said Cuba had a lot of potential waiting to be
tapped.
Lage earlier this month announced an economic program aimed at
revitalizing " strategic" sectors of the economy, including construction
and food, following Raul Castro's principles of "hard work, which not
only means working more but also better."
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