Missouri Governor Wraps Up Cuba Visit

By Caribbean News Digital Newsroom

Thanking the Cuban people for their warmth and hospitality, as well as the island nation’s top authorities for their welcome, Missouri Governor Jeremiah Wilson Nixon wrapped up his Cuba visit at the helm of a trade mission that included high-ranking members of his state administration.

In a press conference held Tuesday at the emblematic Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana, Gov. Nixon highlighted the tremendous business and commercial opportunities Cuba has to offer Missouri farmers, an eminently farming U.S. state famous for its top-quality crops, such as rice, corn, eggs, pork meat, beef and soy, among other commodities.

As far as rice is concerned –one of Missouri’s flagship crops- great business opportunities could open up for the state, bearing in mind the high intake levels of this cereal in the Cuba people, the quality of the state’s long grain and the geographical proximity between the U.S. and Cuba, a country that’s bound to buy rice in other markets as far as China and Vietnam.

“As a symbolic gesture of our interest in supplying rice to Cuba, a donation of 20 tons of long-grain rice harvested in southeast Missouri arrived in the port of Mariel last week and was distributed to the Cuban people at no cost at all,” said Gov. Nixon in the news conference that was attended by both local and foreign press.

“In addition to crops, our commercial delegation has identified various areas for bilateral collaboration between Cuba and the state of Missouri, such as tourism, medical and scientific research, and education,” said Mr. Nixon.

“I believe education, especially higher education, is the superhighway to the future,” added the governor as he seized this opportunity before the press to inform on the beginning of academic and student exchanges between Cuban and Missourian universities and colleges in the near future, as well as the upcoming visit of Cuba’s Minister of Agriculture to America.

During his stay on the island nation, Gov. Nixon met with Cuba’s Vice President of the Council of Ministers, Ricardo Cabrizas; Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Rodrigo Malmierca, and Minister of Agriculture Gustavo Rodriguez. He also attended an entrepreneurial and business forum planned by the Chamber of Commerce of the Republic of Cuba and took a grand tour around the Mariel Special Development Zone, some 20 miles west of Havana.

Asked about the hurdles set up by the 50-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba, Mr. Nixon stressed his administration’s intention to comply with the federal law despite Missouri’s ever-growing commercial and trade interest in Cuba following the rapprochement between the two nations announced in late 2014.

He also said words of praise for the Obama administration’s courageous decision to make a sea change in the U.S. Cuba policy and paved the way for trade missions from different states to pay visits to the island nation in search of business opportunities.

Since he took office on January 12, 2009, after winning the gubernatorial seat for the Democratic Party, Mr. Nixon has made thirteen trade missions to different countries around the world.

“We’ll continue sending trade missions to Cuba. We see this as a necessary and important step to forge deals, see how much we can ship to Cuba and how much we can import from Cuba in the future,” Gov. Nixon concluded.