CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

Cuban Communist Party Leaders Discuss Plan to Split Havana Province

Cuba, June 10, 2010. First Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura on Wednesday presided over an extraordinary plenary meeting of the Provincial Committee of the Cuban Communist Party in Havana.

During the meeting, also attended by Vice President Esteban Lazo, participants analyzed a plan to split the province of Havana in two provinces called Mayabeque and Artemisa.

“An essential goal of this new Political-Administrative Division is to have more coherence among different aspects of society, including the economy and the production of goods and services,” Machado Ventura said.

Havana province’s capital is Havana, even though it only surrounds the city and does not include it because the city is its own province.

Participants also analyzed how convenient it would be if the Cuban capital ceded areas in the edge of the municipalities of La Habana del Este, Guanabacoa and Cotorro, to the province of Mayabeque, which would comprise the eastern municipalities of the current province of Havana.

VP Lazo said that the new division would not damage the existing cooperation between the Cuban capital and the territories that form Havana today.

The new idea will be presented as a bill during the next Ordinary Period of Sessions of the Cuban National Assembly (Parliament).

Havana province, with a population of 747,000, is the country’s biggest agricultural producer and an important manufacturing centre. The split would increase the number of provinces in Cuba by one, to 15. (Cubaminrex- ACN)

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