Cuba - Industry

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Photo by: Keith Tarrier

All Cuban industrial production was nationalized by March 1968. Industry accounts for approximately 35% of GDP.

Cuba had 156 sugar mills in 1985, and at that time, about 10% of exports from the then-USSR to Cuba consisted of machinery for the sugar industry. Other food processing plants produced cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream, wheat flour, pasta, preserved fruits and vegetables, alcoholic beverages, and soft drinks. Light industry comprises textiles, shoes, soap, toothpaste, and corrugated cardboard boxes. Other industries are petroleum products (Cuba has four oil refineries with a total production capacity of 301,000 barrels per day), tobacco, chemicals, construction, cement, agricultural machinery, nickel, and steel production. In the mid-1990s, tourism surpassed sugar processing as the main source of foreign exchange, although the government in 2002 announced plans to implement a "comprehensive transformation" of the sugar industry, including the closing of almost half the existing sugar mills. Although 1.7 million tourists visited the country in 2000, bringing in $1.9 billion, the global economic slowdown in 2001 and the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US negatively impacted Cuba's tourism industry.

An influx of foreign investment followed the passage of new investment laws after 1993.