In a country going through the most severe economic crisis in the last thirty years and with more than one currency in legal use, the government approved a new legal framework to extend financial education to the entire population.
The measure responds to the emergence, despite excessive control, of new economic actors—from private MSMEs to cooperatives and self-employed workers—that require basic knowledge to survive in an environment marked by inflation, scarcity and uncertainty.
Published this week in Official Gazette, Decree-Law 115 on Financial Education establishes the creation of a National Strategy in such domain under the leadership of the Central Bank of Cuba.
The objective is to provide citizens and companies with tools to manage their finances, understand risks and make informed decisions in a context of increasing complexity.
A legal framework for economic resilience
The legal text emphasizes that financial education is a right linked to economic and social well-being. According to the decree, it is a learning process that seeks to instill knowledge, habits and values so that people can face market volatility, plan expenses, save and even protect themselves against risks such as natural disasters or loss of income.
The strategy will apply to both natural and legal persons, and includes training programs, workshops, seminars and educational materials. Participants—from ministries to financial institutions and social organizations—must allocate budgetary resources to guarantee the continuity of the initiatives.
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Central Bank in charge and key contents
The Central Bank of Cuba will be the governing authority of the strategy and, to guarantee its implementation, a coordination system has been designed that articulates three instances: a Strategic Committee made up of key ministries such as Education, Economy and Finance; a Leading Group made up of officials from the Central Bank itself; and a Technical Committee in charge of executing specific programs in collaboration with banks, insurance companies and tax entities, so that the strategy is deployed in an orderly manner and with clearly defined responsibilities.
The decree establishes general principles that will guide the initiatives: accessibility, impartiality, sustainability and popular participation. The programs are intended to be simple, replicable and adapted to the needs of each target group, from students to entrepreneurs.
Implementation guidelines include in-person and virtual modalities, use of websites, books and conferences, as well as periodic training of trainers. In addition, commercial use of the data obtained in the programs is prohibited, ensuring that the information is used exclusively for educational purposes.
The thematic fields range from the most basic to the most complex: Money and transactions, with emphasis on the proper use of the national currency and the importance of financial records. Planning and managing finances, including budgeting, saving, investing and debt management. Risk and benefit, with notions about insurance and protection against contingencies. Financial overview, which addresses regulations, consumer rights and fraud prevention, in addition to other emerging content, such as green banking, virtual assets and sustainable development goals.
A country in crisis and a financial system with reliability deficits
The government initiative comes at a critical moment. Cuba faces a consecutive economic contraction in the last three years, marked by the drop in tourism income, the reduction of remittances and the difficulties in importing food and fuel, all spurred by United States sanctions that now threaten a total oil blockade.
In parallel, inflation hits households hard, while new economic actors—MSMEs and private workers—must deal with a tax system with hardly any fiscal incentives and limited access to credit, in addition to technical failures and energy blackouts in the digital architecture of banking.
In this context, financial education is presented by authorities as a tool to promote resilience and avoid costly mistakes.
The Cuban government’s commitment to institutionalizing financial education could indicate the need to prepare the population for a scenario of profound changes. The coexistence of state, private and cooperative companies, along with the expansion of digital payment services, requires a level of knowledge that until now was limited.
The strategy also seeks to strengthen confidence in the banking and tax system, in a country where informality and distrust of monetary institutions have grown in parallel with the crisis, following financial “corralitos” or ceilings on transactional amounts.
For an academic observer like Pedro Monreal, the initiative is a “presumptuous” act of the “Cuban state bureaucracy,” which “sets up a racket” that overloads “an ineffective Central Bank” with more functions.
As published in his This Cuban economist tells in X “The Central Bank of Cuba has proven to be incapable of fulfilling its basic function of ‘sustaining the stability of the purchasing power of the CUP’. What sense does it make to now recharge it with a ‘pedagogical’ function? That is a task for educational entities,” the expert recommended.
