The Cuban regime announced a trade fair to commemorate the thirteenth anniversary of the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZED Mariel), at a time when the massive exit of foreign companies directly contradicts the official rhetoric on investment and openness.
The event, scheduled for November 2 and 3 at the Morro-Cabaña Military Historical Complex in Havana, will bring together more than 55 local participants and around 200 exhibitors.
The objective is "to foster a connection between the local users and the other new economic actors in the country, as well as to promote products, services, and new incentives to encourage foreign trade and foreign investment," according to the organizing committee to EFE.
The contrast between that aspiration and reality could not be more pronounced.
Since May, when Executive Order 14404 signed by Donald Trump went into effect, several foreign companies have left the Island at an unprecedented pace not seen in decades.
Sherritt International, a Canadian mining company with over three decades of presence in Cuba, has suspended its direct participation in its Cuban joint ventures —Moa Nickel and Energas— and has initiated the immediate repatriation of its employees.
The bank that managed operations with Visa and Mastercard through FINCIMEX, an entity of the military conglomerate GAESA, has ended 32 years of those card operations on the island.
The two largest shipping companies serving Cuban ports, Hapag-Lloyd and CMA CGM, have halted new bookings to Cuba, leaving around 7,000 containers stranded in Jamaica, Panama, and Colombia.
The most direct blow to the ZED Mariel came in July, when the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned Mariel Container Terminal S.A. and Coral Marítima S.A. for an alleged maneuver to evade restrictions.
These losses were compounded by the exit of Meliá Hotels, which closed its 34 hotels on the island after 36 years of presence, along with Iberostar, Barceló, and Blue Diamond Resorts, and British American Tobacco, which sold its stake in Brascuba Cigarrillos at a loss of about 12 million pounds.
The failure of the Mariel Special Development Zone, however, is not a recent phenomenon nor solely attributable to external sanctions.
Founded in November 2013 with a loan of approximately 862 million dollars from the Brazilian bank BNDES, the Mariel Zone has been operating for 13 years at only 40% of its capacity and has managed to attract just over 60 companies in an entire decade.
Its Container Terminal, designed to handle 800,000 TEUs annually, processed only 300,000 TEUs in 2023, less than half of its potential.
The area is controlled by GAESA, the business conglomerate of the Armed Forces, which dominates between 40% and 70% of the formal Cuban economy, making any investment a regulatory compliance risk for foreign companies and banks.
The Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz himself acknowledged before the National Assembly in December 2024 that the Mariel SEZ "was not meeting the set objectives", citing loss of competitiveness, excessive bureaucracy, and lack of legal guarantees.
Despite that diagnosis, the regime has reiterated the promise of the "logistic hub" at international forums throughout 2025 and 2026, from Minsk to Moscow and Shymkent, without producing concrete agreements.
The backdrop of the fair is a plummeting economy: Cuba has experienced a contraction exceeding 15% between 2020 and 2025, and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) projects a GDP decline of 10.3% for this year, the worst in the entire region.
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