On Monday, June 27, Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz, a Council of Ministers vice president, received the honorable Peter Stenlund, Secretary of State at Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
During the meeting - and as part of the implementation process of the Multilateral Agreement signed by the Paris Club Ad-Hoc Group of creditor nations and Cuba - the two countries signed an Official Development Assistance (ODA) debt restructuring agreement.
Given this most recent agreement, and following that which was singed on March 17, 2016, between the two counties restructuring Cuba’s commercial debt with Finland, financial relations between the two countries have now been completely normalized, with the possibility of re-establishing medium and long-term financial assistance.
Cabrisas and Stenlund expressed the willingness of both their countries to work to expand economic and commercial exchanges, as well as increase investments and cooperation efforts.
The Secretary of State was accompanied by Anu Korppi head of the Central America and Caribbean department at the Finnish Foreign Ministry.
Participating on the Cuban side were Isaac Hernández, director of the Central Bank of Cuba; René Lazo, president of the National Bank of Cuba; Yamila Fernández, director general of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Investment; as well as Elio Rodríguez and Manuel Pírez, the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s director for Europe and Canada, and director of International Law, respectively.
