HAVANA – Cuba and China are scheduled to begin construction this year on a 117-million-dollar luxury hotel in Havana, the government-run economic weekly Opciones reported Sunday.

The investment will consist of 51 percent Chinese capital and 49 percent Cuban, and the hotel complex will have 650 rooms and cover an area of 7.5 hectares (about 19 acres) in the “Marina Hemingway” tourist center in western Havana, according to the
economic and trade advisor at the Chinese Embassy on the communist island, Chen Feng.

The diplomat also said that among the events scheduled to be held in Havana to celebrate the 50th year of bilateral Cuban-Chinese relations will be the 23rd Session of the Intergovernmental Commission for economic and trade relations, although he did not specify the date of the meeting.

Cuba and China currently have 13 mixed projects under way, seven of them on the island in the sectors of light and mechanical industry, communications, agricultural production and tourism.

Last February, the Gran Melia Shanghai hotel was inaugurated in Beijing, the product of an accord between its builders: the state-run Chinese firm Xintian (Suntime) and the Cuban firm Cubanacan. That is the first hotel in China to be managed by the Spanish hotel chain Sol Melia.

China is Cuba’s second-largest trading partner and in 2009 bilateral commercial exchange totaled about $1.55 billion, a decline of 31.5 percent compared with 2008, when trade had reached $2.2 billion. EFE