The island nation has been struggling for economic self-sufficiency after losing Soviet aid and trade in the early 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union.
``Virtually all of the productive sectors have grown, which confirms and reaffirms that the economy recovery started in at the beginning of 1995,'' Vice President Carlos Lage said in comments published in the Communist Party daily Granma. ``It puts us in a situation to more than fulfill the growth of 2.5 percent that we have proposed for the present year.''
Tourism, which in recent years has become one of Cuba's most important sources of hard currency, has benefited by a 23 percent increase in visitors this year, he said.
The sugar industry, for centuries the island nation's most important export, is slowly recovering after several years of painfully small harvests, he said. The sugar industry grew 23.4 percent during the first six months of 1999, Lage reported.
During the same period, the government created 12,000 new jobs, he said.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press