Cuba to add new docks, terminal at Cienfuegos port

[Judi Lynn]

Cuba to add new docks, terminal at Cienfuegos port
Updated: October 1, 2010, 6:01 PM


HAVANA (AP) - Cuba will build three additional loading docks and a terminal large enough to accommodate modern supertankers by 2014 at its port in Cienfuegos, part of the communist government's effort with Venezuela to rehabilitate and modernize the area's oil refinery.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a self-described socialist and close friend of Fidel Castro, attended the December 2007 re-inauguration of the Soviet-era facility on central Cuba's southern coast, and since then it has refined 55 million barrels.

Cuba and Venezuelan plan to expand capacity there to 150,000 barrels refined per day and the new berths and terminal will ensure tankers carrying more oil can come and go more freely, said Luis Medina, director of Cuba's national port authority, at a news conference Friday in Havana, 185 miles (300 kilometers) northwest of Cienfuegos.

Chavez's government ships more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba in exchange for island doctors who provide free medical care in his country and other social services. The expanded capacity at Cienfuegos will allow Venezuela to ship more petroleum products that can be refined on the island.

Cuba independently operates its largest oil field, the Varadero field discovered by Russian scientists in 1971, but the communist government relies on energy companies from Canada, Spain, Norway, India, Malaysia and China for other drilling operations.

More:
http://www.buffalonews.com/business/24-hour-business-news/article207432.ece



Cienfuegos, Cuba, located on the South south side, near the Bay of Pigs.
(Guess the Invasion planners thought it would fool Cubans if Americans
armed invaders arrived from the SOUTH rather than the North, eh?)

[bherrera]

1. if the doctors are exchanged for oil, they are not free

This article has a logic mistake. If the doctors are sent to pay for the oil, then they are not "free". The mechanism should say the Venezuelan government pays for these doctors.

The reported number of doctors, according to Monde Diplomatique, is 14.000.

http://mondediplo.com/2006/08/11cuba

This means each Cuban doctor cost is $169 thousand US dollar per year. Therefore, we can say the doctors are not free, they are to be considered employees of the Venezuelan government, which pays them, and then makes them work in the areas where poor people live, in a public health system which is independent of the other public health system of Venezuela.

In October 2007, the website

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/2710

reports the salary of doctors in Venezuela was 800.000 bolivars. President Chavez announced the salary had to be increased by 60 % to 1280000 bolivars per month. We can estimate this number today if we assume the salary is increased by the inflation, about 30 % per year, and correct to the use of the new currency, the bolivar fuerte, 2163 bolivar fuerte per month. If we use the exchange rate of 4.3 bolivar per dollar

as reported in http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/01/09/en_ing_esp_venezuela-implements_09A3268691.shtml

then we have $503 dollar per month.

I think this means the money Venezuela pays includes more than the doctor service, because there is a very big difference in the pay of the venezuelan doctors, and the money estimated for the cuban doctors. But I think it is definite the Cuban doctors are not offering free services, they are receiving very good pay.

[Billy Burnett]

2. Duh. No shit.

No universal or national health care is "free".
It is a common media misrepresentation to name it so.

What they should say is --> no bill to the patients.

[bherrera]

3. Good point

I started to think about this and I agree with you. When we see a free service, we should understand we pay for it. If the government pays for it, this means we pay it, because the government is not a value creation entity. It survives because it uses taxation or the money it extracts from state enterprises to survive.

This made me think too, why pay so much for these Cuban doctors? This means they are not really paying the high salary I estimated by estimating the cash from the oil. It has to be a combination of payments for the doctors and other money which goes to Cuba for other reasons.

I suspect this is arrangement which is used in a mistaken way, because it takes doctors from Cuba. It is more intelligent to pay Venezuelan doctors and to educate more doctors there. Or to separate the accounting to explain what is paid for these doctors, and what is paid for other things. But i don't know what these other things could be, because Cuba does not have many export products Venezuela can use.

[Billy Burnett]

4. Cuba does educate Venezuelan doctors, as well as doctors from all aver the LatAm nations.

No problem to me for peoples to cooperatively share their resources in the name of mutual survival and advancement. Of course, major corporate interests are displeased with the lack of potential for massive exploitation and profits that is displaced by such arrangements for the benefit of the poor and working class citizens.

[bherrera]

5. major corporate profits?

I don't think Venezuelan doctors working in public hospitals are earning major corporate profits. They are not paid very well, according to the data. Why not try to provide some original thought to your writing?

[Judi Lynn]

6. A lot seems to escape you. You totally didn't grasp why B.B. wrote. n/t