HAVANA, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Cuba expects to host around 1.7 million tourists in 1999, 21 percent more than the 1.4 million foreign visitors last year who helped convert the industry into the economy's leading hard currency earner.
Tourism officials, quoted in various local state-run media reports this week, said last year's total number of visitors, up from 1.2 million in 1997, brought $1.8 billion in revenues to the cash-strapped Caribbean island.
Canada, which opposes Washington's trade embargo on communist-run Cuba and maintains an official policy of "constructive engagement" with Havana, was the largest source of foreign visitors, followed by Italy, Germany, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Argentina.
Fidel Castro's government opened up tourism in the late 1980s and is aiming for two million tourists by 2000. Cuban officials say that if the U.S. trade embargo is lifted, that figure would soar thanks to an anticipated influx of American tourists.
Washington effectively prohibits Americans from visiting the island by banning them from spending money in the country. Exceptions are made for several categories, including journalists, academics and U.S.-based relatives of Cuban residents.
Cuban tourism authorities say, however, that "dozens of thousands of Americans" in fact currently visit the island illegally each year, entering and leaving via third countries such as Mexico and the Bahamas.
Tourism this year overtook the traditionally dominant sugar industry as the biggest cash earner in Cuba.
The country has been squeezed since the collapse of its formersuperpower ally, the Soviet Union, at the start of the decade.
Net profit is estimated at nearly 30 U.S. cents out of every dollar in tourism revenue.
Cuba now has a total of 28,000 rooms in 179 hotels across the island, many run in joint ventures with foreign firms. Officials were quoted as saying they hoped to add a further 4,100 rooms in 1999.
18:25 01-12-99
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