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Cuba has accumulated an unpaid debt of 676 million dollars to Brazil, primarily due to financing from the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) for the construction of the Port of Mariel, and the Brazilian Ministry of Finance has confirmed that there is no plan for the regularization of payments.
CNN Brasil reports that the debate has been reignited following the enactment of Law 15.359/2026, which resumes BNDES financing for the export of engineering services, but explicitly prohibits new operations with delinquent countries, effectively excluding Cuba from any new Brazilian credit.
The Port of Mariel was built by the Brazilian company Odebrecht in partnership with GAESA, the conglomerate controlled by the Cuban Armed Forces, as part of a cooperation agreement signed in 2008 during Lula da Silva's first term.
The contracts were signed between 2009 and 2013 for a value of 641 million dollars, and the total cost of the project is estimated to be between 682 and 800 million dollars.
The guarantee that BNDES accepted to back the loan —the revenues from the Cuban cigar industry as collateral for the loan— was later classified by the Federal Court of Accounts of Brazil as "weak" and inadequate for the scale of the operation.
The same court detected illegalities in the contracts: excessive discounts of 68.4 million dollars in interest and extended terms of 25 years instead of the 10 allowed by law, which represented additional savings for Cuba at the expense of the Brazilian treasury.
Cuba began to default on payments in May 2018, accumulating 17.3 million dollars in overdue installments by September of that year.
In October 2018, the Cuban government promised to settle its debt with Brazil, but just two months later, part of that debt defaulted.
When the island stopped paying, BNDES activated the Export Guarantee Fund, transferring the losses to the Brazilian taxpayer.
In February 2023, President Lula expressed optimism: "I am sure that in our Government these countries will pay because they are all friendly countries of Brazil and they will certainly pay the debt they owe to BNDES."
Three years later, the Ministry of Finance itself contradicts that optimism by confirming that there is no specific date or mechanism for regularization, although the overdue amounts continue to accumulate interest.
Tony Volpon, a columnist for CNN Money, was unequivocal: "It's not wise to conduct projects in countries that lack the capacity to repay those loans."
The financial situation of the Cuban regime makes any future payments practically impossible: the island has experienced a contraction of 15% of its GDP over the last five years, a fiscal deficit exceeding 11% of GDP, and a total external debt estimated at $28.7 billion by the end of 2024.
The paradox of the Cuba-Brazil relationship in 2026 is striking. While Lula is unable to recover the 676 million that the island owes him, his government announced the shipment of more than 20,000 tons of food to Cuba as humanitarian aid and defended the Cuban regime before the UN Security Council in April.
But Cuba is not alone in the ranks of debtors. Venezuela owes more than 1.2 billion dollars to Brazil for the metro systems of Caracas and Los Teques, as well as for the National Steelworks, bringing the total debt that both dictatorships owe to the Brazilian treasury to over 1.8 billion dollars, with no real prospect of repayment.
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