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Paris, December 15 (RHC)-- Cuba's Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Rodrigo Malmierca, met Wednesday with the France-Cuba Business Council. During his address, he discussed the economic impact of the blockade imposed on the island by the United States and its extraterritorial scope.

Between April 2019 and December 2020, we estimate the impact of the U.S. economic, commercial and financial blockade at 9 billion dollars.

At the forum organized by the Mouvement des Entreprises de France  International, Malmierca recalled that Donald Trump's administration decreed 243 measures to tighten the siege applied for more than six decades. His successor in the White House, Joe Biden maintained all those hostile actions.

The blockade has reached unimaginable limits, for example, sanctioning a ship for transporting oil to Cuba.

According to the official, Washington's increased aggressiveness and the Covid-19 pandemic, with its impact on key sectors such as tourism, caused a drop in the Gross Domestic Product of close to 11 percent in 2020.

We see a recovery, and the economy should grow around two percent this year, he said.