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CUBA PUTS ITS SMART MONEY ON DIRECT FOREIGN INVESTMENT AS A STEPPINGSTONE TO TAKE A HUGE LEAP IN INVESTMENT RATES AND DRIVE BOTH INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT AND THE STREAMLINING OF PRODUCTION


The Cuban market is seen as a luring place for foreign investment, given the country's high level of healthcare, safety and education. Its geographic location and its proximity to the U.S. are also construed as favorable elements. Until the embargo is completely lifted, companies based in Cuba won't be able to export goods and services to America, but the change in the U.S. policy brings that day closer and therefore the potentials of doing business with Cuba equally accrue.
The new foreign investment act that went into effect in 2014, the portfolio of investment opportunities unveiled at the Havana International Fair, and the Mariel Special Development Zone seemed to be the platform whereby a renewed interest in investing in Cuba could be cashed in on. But so far that hasn't happened at either the speed or the scope people had expected.
Following eight years of transformations, the Cuban economy's average growth rate is 2.7 percent, below the previously forecast objective of 4.4 percent. Pushing behind those results lies the fact that Cuba shows an investment rate of approximately 10 percent of the GDP, twice below the average figure of 20 percent in Latin America and way too far from the 30 to 40 percent rate achieved by Asian countries, by far the nations with the best growth dynamics of recent decades.
Direct foreign investment, the resource meant to encourage a huge leap in investment rates during the ongoing reform process and called to drive the country's international engagement and the streamlining of production, has also fallen behind the previous expectations.

Gauging Expectations through the CSCI
Since the first quarter of 2015, the Cuba Standard website launched a poll in a bid to have a method of its own to gauge perceptions and expectations among businesspeople related to Cuba's economic evolution. The poll is emailed on a quarterly basis to a random swatch of approximately a hundred people.
The outcomes allow for building a quarterly business confidence index: The Cuba Standard Business Confidence Index (CSCI). The CSCI measures the average difference between the positive and negative answers of each and every question. The index is reckoned in such a way that it falls between 0 and 100 percent. The 100 value is obtained when all answers are positive, whereas 0 is only attained if all answers are negative.
In the assessment of the CSCI evolution from the first quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of 2016, the first three quarters of 2015 show increased optimism in the future of the Cuban economy. However, since then the trend has taken a downturn.
The slumping business confidence in the first quarter of 2016 is seen in all of the survey questions, especially in those linked to the intentions to invest, in which the plunge was quite dramatic.
Regulatory and institutional factors remain today as the biggest barriers to business expansion and the arrival of new investments on the island nation.
In the case of the U.S., it will depend on how much headway the executive power could make in easing the economic sanctions, and in the future on the decision by the U.S. Congress to remove the laws that encode the embargo. As far as Cuba is concerned, too many regulations and too much bureaucracy reflect the high level of intervention that still remains in the economic system.
Once those obstacles had been dismantled, the Cuban economy could take advantage of its main attractions in an effort to capture sufficient capital inflow that would eventually make the country jump out of the stagnation it's been bogged down in since the late 1980s.