HAVANA: When Cuba’s foreign minister raised his nation’s single-star flag outside its newly opened embassy in Washington last month, construction equipment giant Caterpillar did the same outside its Peoria headquarters.
Caterpillar is one of growing number of Illinois and Chicago-area companies, civic organizations and cultural institutions rushing into a nationwide race to establish a foothold in the tiny communist country just 90 miles off the Florida shore — a potential trove of new profits on an island that has been off-limits, for the most part, for more than a half-century.
“Just about everybody focuses on the tens of thousands of 60-year-old cars that are on the streets, but for Caterpillar, we focus on the 60-year-old roads they are being driven on. That’s where we see our opportunity,” said Bill Lane, the company’s director of global government affairs.
Though a 54-year-old embargo on trade and travel remains in place, President Barack Obama last December began normalizing relations with Cuba by easing trade restrictions on several sectors, including travel, telecommunications, Internet services, building equipment, banking and airlines. Exceptions for agricultural and medical products have been in place since 2000 and 1992, respectively.
