If the blockade were to be lifted it would create 100 thousand jobs and additional earnings of 6 thousand million dollars for the US economy, according to a study presented by the Director of the Centre for Business and Investigations at the University of South Alabama, in the Fourth National Summit on Cuba, which took place in Mobile, Alabama, in June of this year[1].

Another study carried out in 2000 by the World Policy Institute of New York, revealed that the unrestricted sale of food and medicine to Cuba alone could generate 1600 million dollars a year – almost 4 times the current amount of food purchases made by Cuba in the USA -, and 20 thousand additional jobs for the United States economy[2].

Because of the blockade, the American economy looses up to 1240 million dollars a year in agricultural exportations and up to 3 thousand 600 million dollars every year in other economic activity, according to studies carried out by American institutions. 12[3].

According to estimates made in 2001 by the US International Trade Commission, exportations from the USA to Cuba would range between 658 and 1 200 million a year.

As maintained by another investigation, carried out in 2004 by Tim Lynch, Necati Aydin and Julie Harrington from the State University of Florida, 10 years after the blockade has been lifted, exportations to the Island will swing between 6 thousand million and 9 thousand 470 million dollars a year, with a net or surplus commercial bilateral exportation potential for the USA of 3 thousand 600 million dollars.

Despite the ban on traveling to Cuba, subscribers to the New York Travel and Leisure Magazine selected Cuba as the best island in the Caribbean. For its part, the National Geography Traveler Destination Scoreboard reported that after surveying 200 specialists in sustainable tourism, the Historical Centre of Havana was chosen among the best 115 places in the world. According to a survey carried out in April 2001 by the Cuba Policy Foundation, 66.8% of Americans opined that they should be allowed to travel to Cuba.

A study carried out in 2003 by the Brattle Group revealed that visits by Cubans residing in the United States would increase by 289 additional thousand visitors a year, while visits by Americans would rise to 2.8 million visitors (2.72 million more than before), if the blockade was lifted. In total it was predicted that 3.01 million additional visitors from the United States would travel to Cuba every year[4].

According to estimates, the lifting of travel restrictions to Cuba alone would produce an annual increase of income to the US economy of between 1180 and 1610 million dollars. This rise would create between 16 thousand 888 and 23 thousand 20 new jobs[5].

On the report of other analyses, yearly trips to Cuba from the United States would rise to 4 million visitors in the first year. The most conservative calculations give the figure for the number of people who would arrive in Cuba from the United States in the third year following the lifting of the travel ban at 1.5 million. Based on this last prediction, it is calculated that the elimination of travel restrictions alone would produce a rise of between 126 and 252 million dollars a year more than the current amount in sales of agricultural products from the USA to Cuba[6].

The total loss for American companies for every million tourists who cannot visit Cuba reach 565 million dollars, broken down into:

Million dollars
Airlines.............................................................................. 300
Travel Agencies and Tour Operators............................ 160
Importations to Cuba of food and Drink........................... 45
Other importations to Cuba............................................. 30
Publicity and Press Agencies........................................... 30

If the blockade were to be completely lifted, the US economy would gain 545.6 million dollars and would create 3 thousand 797 jobs after one year, just in travel associated profit. Five years after the lifting of the blockade, the US economy would be making an additional profit to the tune of 1 972 million and would have created 12 thousand 180 jobs[7].

The lifting of the blockade could create an annual income of between 2 thousand and 3 thousand million dollars for American companies in the energy sector, according to a study carried out by two distinguished American economists from the sector in December 2001[8].

In this work they showed that the blockade places insurmountable obstacles in the way of the significant cooperation potentials between Cuba and the USA in the energy sector, limiting the options for the strengthening of US energy security and the diversification of the energy supply to Florida, and restricting the alternatives for the relief of a predictable deficit in the American local refinement capacity. They also pointed out that Cuban waters could offer a rich source of natural gas, with the potential to export to Florida by gas pipelines, affirming that if Cuba were to supply Florida with 2 million tons of gas a year, it would represent for the United States a business opportunity worth 300 million dollars a year. They added that Cuban gas could be profitably converted into liquid products such as petrol or diesel through the construction of a conversion plant.

As a result of this investigation, American economists concluded that if the demand for energy rises by 4% every year, Cuba will need to install additional generator facilities producing 478 megawatts by the year 2015, and that the petrol refinement capacity will have to be increased between at least 30 thousand and 38 thousand barrels a day.

As indicated, OFAC’s recent reinterpretation of the concept of advanced payments for food purchases made by Cuba in the US market has appreciable negative consequences.

Between 2001 and March 2005, Cuban authorities paid for American agricultural merchandise after the products had left their port of origin or before they arrived on the Island, within a period of 72 hours[9].

In 2005 Cuba will import between 750 thousand and 80 thousand tons of rice; in a short amount of time the purchases could rise to one million tons. By purchasing 100 thousand tons from the United States, Cuba would hold third place in the list of the biggest importers of this grain in the American market. If normal transaction existed between the two countries, and without getting rid of other sources supplying rice to the Island, Cuba could purchase between 500 thousand and 700 thousand tons of rice every year from American producers; Cuba would go on to occupy first or second place in the list of the biggest importers of American rice[10].

This year Cuba will buy around 1 700 million dollars worth of agro-foodstuff and was ready to significantly increase the amount of purchases that it made from the United States. If the current commerce restrictions did not exist, the country would have imported between 700 and 800 million dollars worth of American agro-foodstuff. With this the country would have increased two-fold the number of purchases made last year, which were worth 450 million dollars[11].

As a result of the recent actions taken by the OFAC, according to predictions made by the Association of Apple Producers of the USA, the exportation of this fruit to Cuba will fall by at least 30%, when the harvest is picked this summer. The state of Virginia exports around 80% of its apples to the Island. As regards the dairy company Dairy America, its shipments of skimmed powdered milk destined for the Cuban market are now more expensive and are slower to arrive, due to the new OFAC regulations which impose additional expenses to the sum of 3 thousand dollars on every consignment of one thousand tons[12].

The fact that Cuban institutions are prohibited from taking part in the clinical trials for medication made in the United States also directly affects the American people and other countries, For example, the American designers of the trials for medication against sicklemia opine that Cuban participation would have made it possible to get to the new medication on the market at least a year earlier, because the trials would have benefited from a national register of patients suffering from this disease, something which exists in Cuba but which the United States does not have[13].

The negative effects of the blockade in the field of Cuban biotechnology also has detrimental consequences for healthcare in underdeveloped countries. In world terms, Cuba is the country with the most preventive and therapeutic vaccinations against the main diseases to affect the Third World, with a total of 29 projects.

From more than 100 projects, the Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative (PDVI-USA) and the National Vaccine Institute (IVD) of the Republic of Korea chose one by the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology of Cuba, because of its great importance in the perspective obtaining of a vaccination against Dengue, an illness that has many underdeveloped countries in its grip. Financing was given to the other 12 projects chosen, while Cuba’s offering had to be rejected as a result of the blockade.

In 2002 heart conditions took the lives of 240.8 of every 100 thousand citizens in the United States, thus representing the main cause of death in this country. Cerebrovascular complaints, with 56.2 deaths for every 100 thousand inhabitants, represented the third main life taker[14].

In accordance with the editors of Harvard International Review, Ryan Bradley and Edy Rim, an independent evaluation of the University of Geneva named a new Cuban medication , PPG (Ateromixol or Policosanol), created in 1991, as the best anti-cholesterol drug on the market.

A scientific article entitled ‘Meta-Analysis of Natural Therapies for Hyperlipidemia: Plant Sterols and Stanols Versus Policosanol’, published in Pharmacotherapy in 2005, pointed out that plant stanols and sterols, available in the United States, are well tolerated and safe, but Policosanol (PPG) is more effective than the others at reducing LDL cholesterol and is much better for the patient because the dosage is only one tablet a day, it is much cheaper and it is more likely to produce cardiovascular benefits.

If the blockade did not exist, thousands and maybe even hundreds of thousands of American citizens would have survived or wouldn’t have suffered from physical effects or other limitations as a consequence of not receiving treatment, due to absurd political reasons, with PPG, the cheapest and most efficient anti-cholesterol medication available, which was patented in Cuba.

With regards to cancer, since 1970 the lung cancer mortality rate in the United States has been higher than the rate for any other type of cancer. The number of people who die of this disease every year is exceeds 560 thousand people; each year one million 250 thousand people fall ill with this disease; approximately 166 thousand people die each year from lung cancer alone and one in three women and one in two men living in the United States today will suffer from some type of cancer at some stage of their lives.

After more than 30 years designing programmes and spending more than 230 thousand million dollars, the result of the US struggle against cancer has been minimal. If the blockade did not exist, the Cuban biotechnology institutions that are working on several advanced research projects such as therapeutic vaccinations against different types of cancer – 10 projects – or monoclonal antibodies patented for the early diagnosis of cancer, among others, could help to confront this serious illness.