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| FILE - In this March 19, 2015, file photo, a woman jogs on the Malecon as the Thomson Dream cruise ship arrives in Havana bay. The Obama administration has approved on Tuesday, May 5, 2015, the first ferry service in decades between the United States and Cuba, potentially opening a new path for the hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars in consumer goods that travel between Florida and Havana each year. |
HAVANA (AP)
-- The Obama administration approved the first ferry service in decades
between the United States and Cuba on Tuesday, potentially opening a new
path for the hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of millions
of dollars in goods that travel between Florida and Havana each year.
Baja
Ferries, which operates passenger service in Mexico, said it received a
license from the U.S. Treasury Department. Robert Muse, a lawyer for
Baja Ferries, said he believed other ferry service petitions had also
been approved. The Treasury Department said it could not immediately
confirm that, but the Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Florida said approvals
also were received by Havana Ferry Partners of Fort Lauderdale,
United
Caribbean Lines Florida in the Orlando area and Airline Brokers Co. of
Miami.
Muse said Baja had yet to request
approval from Cuba, but added that he was optimistic the service would
allow a significant increase in trade and travel between the two
countries.
The Cuban government made no
immediate comment on the news and it is far from clear that 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 normalizing relations with Cuba," said Muse, an expert
on U.S. 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 United States.
That
ended with the revolution, and the more than 600,000 people who travel
between the U.S. and Cuba each year depend on expensive charter flights.
About 80 percent of U.S .travelers to Cuba are Cuban-Americans visiting
relatives, and a large number travel with huge amounts of 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
tightened Cuban customs rules.
Muse said he
believed ferries would allow lower-priced passenger and cargo service
and provide a potential conduit for new forms of trade allowed by Obama
when he announced a series of loopholes in the trade embargo on Cuba
late last year. Among other measures, Obama allowed the import of some
goods produced by Cuba's new private sector and allowed the virtually
unlimited export of products to entrepreneurs.
Ferries
also provide a new route for U.S. travelers to Cuba, who also depend on
the charter services. Travel from the U.S. has been rising since
Obama's Dec. 17 announcement, and new pressure groups are pushing for
Congress to end all travel restrictions and allow pure tourism,
currently prohibited by law.
