Cleber Tractors is First US Company Authorized in Cuba

Cleber Tractors is First US Company Authorized in Cuba / 14ymedio
Posted on February 26, 2016

14ymedio, Havana, 15 February 2016 – The Cleber Tractor Company has
become the first U.S. company to receive authorization from the Office
of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Department of the
Treasury to operate in Cuba, as reported Monday Associated Press (AP).

Last November, the Alabama-based company won a license of the Government
of Cuba to operate in the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM).

Cleber will built an assembly plant for up to 1,000 small tractors a
year, specifically designed to support and expand organoponic
cultivation methods. These products will be sold to independent farmers
in Cuba, according to the AP. The assembly plant will be called "Oggún,"
like the orisha of the Yoruba religion linked to technology and
surgeons, and syncretic with Saint Peter in Catholicism.

The company's partners, Horace Clemmons and Saul Berenthal – who was
born on the island – received notice from the Treasury Department last
week and plan to initiate their activities in the country in the first
trimester of the coming year.

"Everyone wants to go to Cuba to sell something, but we are not trying
to do that. We are studying the problem and how to help Cuba resolve the
problems that they believe are the most important to resolve," Clemmons
told AP. "We believe that we will both win long term if we do things
that are beneficial to both countries."

Among the biggest problems facing Cuban farmers is access to machinery
that will facilitate work in the fields. Currently, the tractors that
remain active are state-owned, are affiliated to a cooperative or have
decades of use in private hands, and have been preserved thanks to
ingenuity and spare parts purchased in the informal market.

Source: Cleber Tractors is First US Company Authorized in Cuba /
14ymedio | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/cleber-tractors-is-first-us-company-authorized-in-cuba-14ymedio/