HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters):

Cuba's remarkable recovery from an economic crisis, caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, continued this year with double digit growth expected and good prospects for 2007, the state-run news agency said on Monday.

"Cuba will register 12.5 per cent economic growth this year, and the prospective for 2007 is promising," Economy and Planning Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez was quoted as saying at a meeting of economists.

Cuba reported growth of 11.8 per cent in 2005 and 5.0 per cent in 2004, based on a locally devised formula that estimates the market value of free social services and subsidised goods and services. It also includes massive medical and other services exported mainly to Venezuela.

Independent sources such as the Economist Intelligence Unit and UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) estimate the formula overstates Cuba's gross domestic product by between three and four percentage points.

The news agency did not give a reason for Cuba's 12.5 per cent economic growth.

Professional services

But officials in public and private statements in recent weeks have said a boom in the exports of professional services and medicines, high nickel prices, infrastructure development and construction were behind the increase despite the stagnation of the tourism industry and a decline in agricultural output.

Cuba's GDP fell 35 per cent when the Soviet Union collapsed, depriving it of massive subsidies and resulting in shortages of food, energy, transportation and capital.

Since 2000 the import-dependent communist nation has moved away from sugar as its main export, with medical services, tourism, nickel, family remittances and pharmaceuticals now accounting for most of its foreign exchange earnings.

Cuba also shifted its main economic partners to Venezuela and China.

The island began bartering medical and other services for Venezuelan oil in 2005. Venezuela has also begun to pay Cuba for additional medical and other services, which Cuban economists valued in the billions of dollars per year.

China is supplying the Caribbean island with hundreds of millions of dollars of soft trade and development credits and bilateral trade this year was expected to nearly double, nearing US$1.5 billion.