Foreign companies, several of them based in European Union member states, have sharply reduced their presence in Cuba as a United States (US) deadline to sever ties with the island’s military-run conglomerate GAESA takes effect, the news agency AFP has reported.
By June 2, foreign businesses had vastly scaled back their operations, piling fresh pressure on an economy already battered by an energy blockade that Washington imposed in January.
A US executive order issued on May 1 froze GAESA’s American assets and penalised foreign firms that work with the conglomerate. According to the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), those companies had until June 5 to adjust their activities.
A wave of departures and suspended operations in recent weeks suggested the warning had worked.
“The short-term impact on the Cuban economy of all these international companies leaving is devastating,” Cuban economist and consultant Daniel Torralbas told AFP, describing 2026 as the worst year for the Cuban economy in 70 years.
Canadian hotel group Blue Diamond Resorts said on June 1 it had shut down its operations on the island, citing difficult tourism conditions without directly referring to the sanctions.
Spanish group Iberostar was pulling out of about a dozen hotels it managed with Gaviota, part of GAESA, sources told AFP. The Mallorca-based company would continue to co-manage hotels owned by Cuba’s tourism ministry, they added.
Two further hotel groups — Spain’s Melia and Indonesia’s Archipelago International — were also considering scaling back or leaving altogether, according to the sources.
French shipping firm CMA CGM and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd, meanwhile, said they would temporarily suspend freight bookings to Cuba, citing the US order.
Canadian miner Sherritt announced its departure on May 7, ending nickel and cobalt operations run since the 1990s in a joint venture with State-owned General Nickel Company SA.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American and one of Havana’s fiercest critics, accused GAESA of enriching a narrow elite at ordinary citizens’ expense, calling it a “state within the state” that answered to no one.
Havana rejected the claims on June 2, describing the measures as the most intense and dangerous escalation in recent Cuba-US relations. It said the conglomerate had been set up as a counterweight to the US trade embargo in place since 1962, and credited it with sustaining the economy during the Covid-19 pandemic and building more than 10,000 homes.
