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The Chamber of Commerce of the Republic of Cuba launched the Booster Program this Monday, an initiative aimed at connecting small and medium-sized Cuban enterprises with international markets, as reported by the state agency ACN.
The launch, announced by the commercial institution via an online broadcast from its headquarters in Havana, is part of the New Economic Actors (NAE) Project, an international cooperation initiative funded by the European Union with 14 million euros and implemented in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The program is structured in two distinct modalities.
The Sectoral Booster targets coffee, honey, derivatives, and processed fruits with added value, while the Geographical Booster focuses on information technology companies, cultural and creative industries, and renewable energies, aimed at markets in Mexico, Canada, and Europe.
The methodology that underpins the program originates from France and had already been implemented by ProCuba to train "Boosters" of exporting SMEs.
The Booster Program offers coaching, mentoring, and support to selected economic actors, and is developed in partnership with Business France, the National Institute of Economic Research (INIE), INAENE, and the Chamber of Commerce itself.
In addition to UNDP and the European Union, the initiative is supported by the Ministry of Economy and Planning, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, and ProCuba.
The program arises in a context where the participation of the Cuban private sector in foreign trade is still very marginal: data from the Cuban private sector in October 2025 estimated that non-state management forms accounted for only 3.2% of the country's exports, led by charcoal and IT services.
The overall export landscape is also not encouraging: in the first half of 2025, the Cuban government admitted that the economy achieved only 62% of the export plan for goods, compared to 78% for the same period in 2024.
In that same semester, exports from non-state management forms increased by 30%, reaching about 21 million dollars, although starting from a very low base.
The regulatory environment adds additional pressure: in 2024, the regime imposed fines of over 348 million pesos on private small and medium-sized enterprises, and in February 2026, it approved a law to retain foreign currency from international trade, adding more controls to the sector.
The NAE Project, which is set to be implemented from June 2024 to October 2028, has already launched previous calls: one for the agrifood sector with financing of up to 40,000 dollars per project, and another for the information technology sector with up to 20,000 dollars per initiative, aimed at state and private small and medium-sized enterprises, non-agricultural cooperatives, and local development projects.
The Booster Program represents the internationalization component of that broader project, and its actual scope will depend on whether Cuban MSMEs can operate with sufficient autonomy in a system that has historically restricted their access to foreign currency and external markets.
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