Channel News Asia

Agreements signed during next week’s visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao should allow Cuba to double production of nickel from its current level of 75,000 tonnes a year, according to Cuban President Fidel Castro.

“These are big, big investments,” Castro said in a four-hour televised address late Tuesday.

He said the Chinese investments would eventually mean that “nickel production, which is now of 75,000 to 76,000 tonnes (annually)—will double.”

He stressed that Cuba would retain 51 percent ownership of companies created with Chinese capital.

Castro said his Chinese counterpart would arrive in Cuba—the only one-party, communist-ruled country in the Americas—on Monday for a 48-hour visit.

Hu Jintao is currently in Argentina on a Latin American tour that already took him to Brazil and will continue in Chile, where he will attend a weekend summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Coperation countries.