from Financial Times Aug. 20
Selective industrialisation in Cuba is proceeding more or less according to plan and is far from being a stillborn policy as reported widely in London this woek,
It is true that Dr. Fidel Castro, the Promier, speaking at a rally at the week-end announced the death of the idea of building a steelworks on the island, But this project, based as it was on a rather intricate system of using iron ore recovered during tha refining of nickel, was nevar firmly based in reality and its abandonment could not be counted a reverse to Cuban industrialisation,
Meanwhile work on more hardheaded plans for using more easily available natural resources are proceading, Production is already in progress at the British-tuilt plant for processing kenaf (a juta substitute) and work is nearly completed on a French—bauilt plant to process the liquid by-products of sugar manufatturing, principally yeast,
To remedy what is perhaps the principal defect in the country's mechanisation, a factory is currently turning out a wide variety of spare parts for the great variety of U.5,-made equipment in Cuba. The nomavail=ability of spares for machinery from bises to sugar squipment owing to the U.5,. trade embargo has been and continues to be a major headache for Cuba's planners,
“vidence that Cuba intends to continue industrialisation, if possible in co-operation with “lestern European suppliers, is evidenced by the plans already referred to and also by the presence in London of Sr, Fenrando Guerra of the Cuban Ministry of Foroign Tradas.sa.
Referring in his weak-end speech to the agricultural sphore Dr. Castro also announced an inerease in the proportion of cultivated land that would pass into blic ownershi: The fina
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