HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 20 (ACN) Cuba and Spain signed a document formalizing a 24.5 million euro donation to the Caribbean nation, as an additional Spanish contribution to recover from the damage inflicted by recent hurricanes Ike and Gustav.
The document was signed by Spain’s State Secretary for Foreign Cooperation, Soraya Rodriguez Ramos and Cuba’s deputy Minister of Economic Cooperation and Foreign Investment Ricardo Guerrero, in the presence of the Vice-president of Cuba’s Council of Ministers Jose Ramon Fernandez.
The donation, which includes two stages, will be dedicated to basic recovery aspects in the Cuban territories hard-hit by the hurricanes, which inflicted damage calculated at some 5 billion dollars.
Rodriguez said that the money will be dedicated to recovery activity in the areas of education, water management and housing rehabilitation. Nearly half a million homes were partially or totally affected by the storms.
The largest portion of the aid will be handed over to Cuba during 2009 and 2010, running parallel to a bilateral program already underway, according to international agencies EFE, DPA and AP.
Cuba is a priority in our cooperation for development policy and it is a strategic South-South cooperation partner, said the Spanish government official. She added that Cuba has been working for some time now in cooperation projects with third countries, many of them in Latin America.
Soraya Rodriguez announced that a joint technical commission will identify the concrete actions to be taken as part of the support program for Cuba.
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