The Cuban government announced this week a New measurement package framed in his plan to “correct distortions and reimpulse the economy.”
The new measures include “the update of electric rates in certain sectors” to “to encourage savings” and “centralized regulation of maximum retail prices to the rice and national production beans,” said Prime Minister Manuel Marrero during a meeting during a meeting With the provincial governors.
The package also contains “the update of the construction pricing system for all economic actors”, as well as “business modalities between state entities and non -state management forms, seeking productive chains”, According to review The newspaper Granmawithout providing more elements on the content of the measures.
The review, which weighs what is announced as a test of the “progress” government economic program, mentions in the group of new provisions “the use of prepaid cards by legal persons for the purchase, fundamentally, fuels.”
In addition, it refers to other measures “aimed at the application of incentives to recover the attraction of foreign investors in the special area of Mariel Development” and “the implementation of a new mechanism for the management, control and allocation of foreign exchange for all Economic actors ”, something already announced previously by the authorities.
Granma It also points out “the rearrangement of trade that performs the non -state management forms” – although without specifying whether it is the measures in this direction already announced last December or if new ones are included – and “the redistribution of the inejecutions of the inejecutions of the Salary fund in the budgeted units, in order to encourage the permanence of the workforce, based on the fulfillment of its functions and missions ”.
Cuban government restricts the private sector of the private sector
“In the process of implementation”
At the meeting, held on Wednesday, Marrero reiterated that the government program is “transverse” to “the essences and policies of the country’s economic and social life.”
About the announced measures said that they are already “in the process of implementation, from the assurance they require” – although without explaining the point where that implementation is found – and confirmed that “in the next few days” more information would be provided In this regard.
The Cuban government currently promotes a dollarization process to deal with the severe economic crisis suffered by the island and seek currencies for the diminished state coffers. This process, defended as “necessary” by the authorities, is a pillar of the program to “reimprorate the economy” in 2025, which was approved weeks ago by the Council of Ministers.
Then, although the official reports did not abound on the actions and the schedule of the government program, some elements mentioned now among the new measures were mentioned, such as a new mechanism for the management of the currency of the economic actors and the “proposals to strengthen The attributes ”of the Mariel Special Zone.
However, the information offered publicly left empty and questions – like now – something lamented by academics and economists, who noticed the importance of having such information to be able to evaluate the government’s plan objectively.
Llover on wet
One of the experts who regretted the deficiencies of the information released on the government program, was the economist Pedro Monreal, who on Thursday questioned again what was reported in the official press about the new package of measures.
To counterbalance the tone of the review of GranmaMonreal points out that “the announced measures, far from demonstrating ‘the progress’ in the Cuban government program by 2025, show the early failure of the economic instruments they prepared and the usual replication to the comfort zone of the administrative mechanisms.”
In particular, it loads against the new price stop announced, this time for rice and beans harvested in Cuba, a type of measure repeated by the government that – as he, other economists and many Cubans have warned – ends many times for being for being a Boomerang by provoking shortage of the “top” products and strengthening the black market.
In this regard, Monreal pointed out that “forcing rice retailers and national production beans not only shows incompetence but also recklessness” and stressed that the measure “does not solve the structural deficit of the agricultural offer of Cuba.”
2/6 Forcing rice retailers and national production beans not only shows incompetence but also reckless. It is transnochado populism that does not solve the structural deficit of the agricultural offer of Cuba pic.twitter.com/kcvhyissgd
– Pedro Monreal (@pmmonreal) Februry 20, 2025
In addition, the expert considered “Worrying” that local officials, cited in press reports, “say that if the sellers do not offer at the top price ‘the position will be closed and the relevant measures will be taken.”
“Obviously it would not be an increase in national offer because magic does not work in the economy,” he said.
Besides, catalog As a “voluntary hallucination” government insistence on seeking “productive chains” between state and private “in the absence of economic calculation, few labor incentives, low investment, distorted prices, and monetary and exchange multiplicity.”
The announcement of new measures – even when they are already implemented to some degree – adds to other recent provisions, such as the Increased toll rate and the Sale of special gasoline only in dollarsalthough the latter is due, according to the authorities, to the deficit of this type of fuel in the midst of the current energy crisis on the island, and not to the dollarization process.
