The Italian company Italsav, owned by businessman Berto Savina (Bartolomeo Sabina Tito), an old friend of the Castro family and doing business in Cuba since the early 1990s, will take over Galiano’s former Ten Cent, known in recent decades as Variedades Galianoto open a shopping center there in MLC.
According to the official website Cubadebate, the signing of the Treaty on International Economic Association on Thursday paved the way for this The Caribe and Italsav stores agree to open the new store Variedades Galiano Casalinda from the beginning of 2024located in the old trading street of Havana.
Italsav had already anticipated in early 2023 its intention to open its own shopping center in Cuba in September 2023, although not where it would be located.
According to the note This agreement is “the first of its kind in the country in retail” and will strengthen “an alliance of more than 25 years between Tiendas Caribe and Italsav.”a company that initially managed stores called Todo x 1 and more recently managed the soap bubbles and water and soap hygiene products markets with a network of more than 30 stores across the country.
Sabina Tito said at the signing of the agreement that the support of the Cuban authorities “has allowed her to achieve results in the country.” “We are sealing an agreement after more than a year of negotiations with the certainty that this is a novel project.”
Ana María Ortega, general director of the state-run Tiendas Caribe, assured: “Since our beginnings we have had this supplier and we have a direct relationship with him. Our relationships have always been respectful. Our chain was created in a complex time and now we are fighting another battle in the economy.
As expected, Sabina Tito’s business also targets Cuban expats with family and friends on the island. For this reason, Cubadebate assumes that “in a first phase, an online service will be offered for purchases made abroad, offering a range of food, shoes, household appliances, hygiene products and other household items.”
The businessman had an exclusive agreement with the TRD Caribe retail chain since the mid-1990s, a former official at Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment (MINCEX) told Cubanet. According to this article The Italian’s defender is Tony Castro, son of the late dictator Fidel Castro.
“But both [Todo por 1] up to the current Agua y Soap were created and managed by the GAE (GAESA), as well as the new supermarket; The difference from the above is that it expands the type of products available for sale. “It will no longer be just hygiene and beauty items, but also food and even some equipment,” expected the source, whose identity was not revealed.
The future Sabina Tito shopping center will be located in the building where the American chain Woolworth founded a popular store in 1924.which by 1959 had four other stores in Havana and employed about 1,000 people, most of them women.
In December 2022, the Ministry of Internal Trade (MINCIN) announced the approval of the mixed company Gran Ferretero SA with Spanish capital, but this was not discussed publicly again.
A few days ago, The trading house RusMarket announced the opening of its first store for the marketing of Russian products, also in MLC, in Havana. Suitable facilities for accommodation would be the Yumurí or Cuatro Caminos shopping centers, also in Havana.
Likewise the Cuban-American businessman Hugo Cancioone of Havana’s lobbyists in Washington and owner of Katapulk, a platform that imports numerous products from the United States, including cars, Days ago, it launched its food brand DeCancio Foods.
This would add to its offering legumes, powdered milk, oil, all these basic needs that have become almost inaccessible to the majority of Cubans, and the Katapulk sells online “at exorbitant prices,” the Food Monitor Program reportsan independent initiative addressing food insecurity in Cuba.
This comes at a time when Cuba is suffering its worst crisis in decades, with severe shortages of food, medicine and consumer goods, while the government is investing more in hotels and tourist facilities than in reviving the national economy and agriculture.