Cuba’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, announced on Friday that Cuba will seek to create an industrial park for the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) within the island’s special economic zone.

The nation is looking at placing the proposed industrial park on a 50-hectare (123 acre) plot of land in the Mariel province which will include a port approximately 45km (27 miles) from Havana. Cuba has proposed lending the plot to the EEU for a term of 50 years, with an option to extend the lease.

The creation of the industrial park could prove to be a “demonstration of joint efforts to create production chains leading to the kind of interregional integration that we strive for in a multipolar world,” according to a speech given by Marrero Cruz at a meeting of the EEU intergovernmental council.

The EEU is a Russian-led organization of five post-Soviet countries – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. For several years now Cuba has been actively cooperating with the bloc, becoming a full-fledged observer in 2020.

Cuba first proposed the idea of an industrial park last year, noting that the idea could make the Cuban market more accessible to businesses from the EEU and serve to open other markets in other Latin American companies to the bloc.

Under the proposal, the EEU would be able to engage in manufacturing at the industrial park, make direct investments, strike up deals, and engage in other business.

Several Belarusian and Russian companies already have a presence in Mariel. Cuba has offered tax and customs preferences to foreign companies operating in the special economic zone to encourage investment and localization of production in Cuba.

Cuba and Russia have shared close economic ties going back to the days of the Soviet Union. Last year the two nations saw bilateral trade triple. According to official data released last week, in the first four months of the year trade turnover surged nine-fold compared to 2022.