HAVANA, Dec 14 (Reuters) - The Cuban government, which keeps tight controls on the national economy, said on Tuesday it is ready for the Y2K computer glitch after a three-year preparation program costing $100 million.

``Cubans can be perfectly calm about operating their bank accounts, flying by plane, watching television without problems,'' Steel, Metallurgy and Technology Minister Ignacio Gonzalez Planas said.

``People can go about their daily activities without the passing from one century to another posing any danger,'' he added at a ceremony in Havana to demonstrate the Caribbean island's preparations for the possible millennium

bug.

Y2K refers to the potential problem for computers unable to distinguish between 2000 and 1900 because they were originally designed to read only the final two digits of the year to determine a date.

Although communist Cuba's economy is still relatively small and technologically under-developed compared to other major nations of Latin America, it has become increasingly dependent on foreign computer components in recent years.

At Tuesday's ceremony, Gonzalez handed certificates to 28 ministries and other state organizations guaranteeing they were ``Ready to face the 2000 information error.''

Officials said that since 1996, President Fidel Castro's government had begun a nationwide program, involving 30,000 specialists, to study and prepare for the consequences of Y2K.

Between 12,000 and 14,000 computers have been substituted, representing about 12 percent of the island's total, they said.

``All the country's sectors are ready to face Y2K,'' Cuba's Information director Melchor Gil Morel told Reuters.

He added that the chief investments had been in the aviation, communications and health sectors. Unlike other countries, the bank sector was not hard to prepare because it is still relatively short on technology, added Gil.

``We are sure that nothing is going to happen in Cuba,'' the official said, emphasizing that personally he would be happy to take a plane on the night of Dec. 31.

Despite a nearly four-decade-old U.S. trade embargo on communist-run Cuba, American technology still enters the island with relative ease via third nations such as Panama or Mexico.

That, together with Asian and European technology, has been gradually replacing in recent years Russian technology on which Cuba was heavily dependent prior to the collapse of the old Soviet bloc at the start of the 1990s.

Since the partial opening of the Cuban economy to Western capital a decade ago, scores of foreign companies from Canada, Europe, Latin America and elsewhere have set up about 360 joint ventures with the Cuban state.

But Cuba operates no stock or other financial markets open to foreign capital as in most other nations of Latin America.

-- Llama man (llama@cool.net), December 15, 1999

Answers

I'll bet they are OK. The Cuban economy and infrastructure are Stone Age. How many chips or how much computerization do you have in a '55 Buick?

It'd be a good place for a Carribean vacation during the rollover- a y2k doomer's paradise. Or bring a pocket full of gold & silver coins and maybe $10K in US dollars and retire in relative luxury while the western world crashes. Its the western hemisphere version of A Man who Would be King .If they had any Internet access, it'd be one of my bug out options.

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), December 15, 1999.