Just days before President Barack Obama’s historic trip to Cuba, the administration announced new regulations Tuesday that will allow individuals to travel to the island on their own people-to-people trips, permit the use of U.S. dollars in more transactions with the island and further relax restrictions on doing business.
The new regulations, the fifth round of changes in the past year, will take effect Wednesday. They include:
▪ Individual travel — Americans on people-to-people educational tours to the island used to have to travel in organized groups. Now they can plan their own itineraries as long as they keep records showing they’ve engaged in a full-time schedule of educational exchanges.
“This change is intended to make authorized educational trade to Cuba more accessible and less expensive for U.S. citizens and will increase opportunities for direct engagement between Cubans and Americans,” the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.
Individual travelers can also make trips under the auspices of an organization that sponsors people-to-people exchanges in which case the burden of record-keeping falls to the sponsor.
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