Cuban light industry lost US$12.891 million from May 2009 to April 2010 as a result of the economic, commercial and financial blockade maintained by the United States against Cuba.
 
One of the main causes of these losses is the import of products for more distant markets and rising freight and insurance costs, along with the additional cost in the immobilization of resources in inventory.
 
According to the latest report presented by Cuba to the United Nations General Assembly on the need to end the blockade, damages in this sector have had a negative impact on improving basic needs of the population.
 
The Union Suchel company, for example, cannot buy materials on the U.S. market for making soap, detergent and lotion.
 
This means Cuba spent an additional US$6,716,600 to make those goods, an amount that could have been used to make 58.7 million more bars of soap.
 
Likewise, the Union Poligrafica printing company had to purchase inputs in Asian markets, meaning it had to spend an additional $2 million.
 
With that money, Cuba, under siege for almost half a century by a policy opposed widely all over the world, could have made 16.7 million high-quality school notebooks.
 
The blockade, according to official data, has caused material losses for Cuba of U.S. $751.363 billion, a calculation that takes into account the more than 30 times the U.S. dollar has depreciated against gold from 1961 to 2009.