US approves first ferry services to Cuba in decades

The Obama administration has approved the first ferry services in decades between the US and Cuba, potentially opening a new path for the hundreds of thousands of people and the hundreds of millions of dollars in goods that travel between Florida and Havana each year.

Baja Ferries, which operates a passenger service in Mexico, said it received a licence from the US treasury department. Company lawyer Robert Muse said he believed other ferry service petitions had also been approved.

While the treasury department said it could not immediately confirm the granting of licences, the Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Florida said approvals were also received by Havana Ferry Partners of Fort Lauderdale, United Caribbean Lines Florida of Orlando and Airline Brokers of Miami.

Mr Muse said Baja had yet to request approval from Cuba, but was optimistic the service would eventually allow a significant increase in trade and travel between the two countries.

The Cuban government made no immediate comment on the news, and it remains unclear whether it is willing or able to allow a major new channel for the movement of goods and people between the two countries.

“I think it’s a further indication of the seriousness of the Obama administration in normalising relations with Cuba,” said Mr Muse, an expert on US law on Cuba.

“We’re now going from the theoretical to the very specific.”

Before Cuba’s 1959 revolution, ferries ran daily between Florida and Cuba, bringing American tourists to Havana’s hotels and casinos and allowing Cubans to take overnight shopping trips to the US.

The 600,000-plus people who travel between the US and Cuba each year currently depend on expensive charter flights.

US travellers

About 80 per cent of US travellers to Cuba are Cuban-Americans visiting relatives, and a large number travel with consumer goods unavailable in communist Cuba, from baby clothes to flat-screen TV sets.

That cargo has become increasingly expensive and difficult to bring in recent years, due to the high prices charged by charters and the tightening of Cuban customs rules.

Mr Muse said he believed ferries would allow lower-priced passenger and cargo service and provide a potential conduit for the new forms of trade allowed by Barack Obama when he announced a series of loopholes in the trade embargo on Cuba late last year.

Among other measures, the US president allowed the import of some goods produced by Cuba’s new private sector and allowed the virtually unlimited export of products to entrepreneurs.

Travel from the US to the island has been rising since Mr Obama’s December 17th announcement and new pressure groups are pushing for Congress to end all travel restrictions and allow pure tourism, which is currently prohibited by law.

PA