HAVANA: Cuba detailed a wide-ranging plan on Friday to protect essential services and ration fuel as the communist-run government dug in its heels in defiance of a US effort to cut off oil supply to the Caribbean island.
The rationing measures are the first to be announced since President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on the US-bound products of any country exporting fuel to Cuba and suggested hard times ahead for Cubans already suffering severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
Government ministers said the measures would guarantee fuel supply for key sectors, including agricultural production, education, water supply, health care and defense.
Commerce Minister Oscar Perez-Oliva struck a defiant tone as he laid out details of the government plan.
“This is an opportunity and a challenge that we have no doubt we will overcome,” Perez-Oliva told a television news program. “We are not going to collapse.”
