Cuban purchases of food from the United States will fall by at least a third this year as the island slashes imports to stabilise an ever-weak economy further hammered by the global economic crisis, a top trade official said Monday.

Igor Montero, head of the state import company, Alimport, calculated that the communist government would spend less than US$590 million on American food in 2009 once banking, shipping and other transaction costs are included. That's down at least 32 per cent from last year's US$870 million.

Montero blamed the economic crisis but also took a swipe at Washington's 47-year-old trade embargo, even though it exempts food, arguing that America should begin buying Cuban products and allowing its citizens to visit the island as tourists.

"If we aren't given more possibility to generate revenue through Cuban exports to the United States, or an exchange of visitors," Montero said, "it's going to be very difficult to continue to reach the levels of trade we've grown accustomed to."

He said 2009 will mark the first year American food imports to Cuba have not increased since the US Congress authorised direct sale of agricultural products to this country in 2000.

Because of a dispute over financing, Cuba refused to import even a single grain of rice until a hurricane caused food shortages in November 2001.

After that, the US quickly became Cuba's top source of food and will retain that title in 2009, despite falling sales.

Cuban officials have begun a campaign to increase domestic food production as falling imports have squeezed product supplies at the country's farmers and supermarkets. But so far, those efforts have led to little increased output.

Last year Cuba spent a record of more than US$710 million for US agricultural products of all kinds - a figure lower than the one Montero gave because it does not include transaction costs - according to the New York-based US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. That was 61 per cent more than in 2007, the council reported.

The spike came as Cuba stockpiled food in the face of rising commodity prices, a strategy that backfired when three hurricanes hit the island, damaging many of the warehouses where perishable items were stored.

Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Rodrigo Malmierca said that foreign imports as a whole were down 36 per cent to about US$10 billion so far this year, and that about 80 per cent of that was food.

Trading partner

Some 51 per cent of imports comes from the United States, he said, though Cuba's top trading partner remains Venezuela, led by socialist ally Hugo Chavez, followed by China, Russia, Spain and Brazil.

In a speech kicking off a foreign trade fair east of Havana on Monday, Malmierca said "complex economic factors" have forced Cuba to delay payments to many of its foreign suppliers. But he said that the island "is ready to hold dialogues to fix that."

Thirty-five US businesses, most of them food, agriculture or shipping companies, brought about 200 representatives to Cuba for the fair. Among those here were state agriculture officials from Maryland, Virginia and Georgia, Montero said.

Terry Coleman, Georgia's deputy commission of agriculture, said the White House should push to modify banking regulations so that Cuba can transfer payments from its banks to American ones without having to go through financial institutions in third countries.

"We are hoping and praying for a real approach to trade," he said. "Normal trade is direct. You buy, you send the products to the ships and there's no middleman."

- AP