P.M. BRIEFING : Cuba Buying Bikes in Oil Crisis
Cuba has bought 200,000 bicycles and is negotiating the purchase of half a million more to help the country face its severe oil crisis, the official newspaper Granma today quoted President Fidel Castro as saying.
Granma said Castro told a group of young people doing agricultural work over the weekend in the town of Guines outside Havana that the government is also studying the possibility of building three factories to manufacture bicycles.
Castro did not say where the bicycles will come from but Western diplomats said they understood they will be from China.
Citing a shortfall of 2 million tons in Soviet oil shipments and the crisis in the Persian Gulf, Cuba on Aug. 29 announced drastic energy-saving measures that included further restrictions in gasoline rationing to state and private vehicles and an order to “optimize” the use of mechanized transport.
Castro said Saturday the government is also considering cutting back the workweek as an alternative to massive layoffs. Most Cuban employees currently work a five-day week and every other Saturday.
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