Cuba continues to run a huge trade deficit and the country's 2008 performance was worse than previously reported, the official Granma newspaper said today, quoting Foreign Trade Minister Rodrigo Malmierca, Reuters reported. "We are calling upon our companies to radically change their export attitude and culture. During the first trimester 80 percent of foreign trade represented imports, something that should concern all of us," Malmierca was quoted as telling state managers at an award ceremony on Thursday. Financing is an additional problem due to the international crisis and late payments to governments and traders, western business sources said. "Foreign Trade Minister Rodrigo Malmierca said 2008 trade closed up 30 percent, a figure fundamentally based on a 41 percent increase in imports. Exports were only 92 percent of what they were the previous year," Granma said. Granma gave no figures for 2008, but official figures for 2007 showed a deficit of $6.9 billion, with exports totaling $4.3 billion and imports $11.2 billon. Based on Malmierca's statement on Thursday, exports were just under $4 billion last year, and imports $15.8 billion, leaving a trade deficit of $11.8 billion.
