Some deputy, in the first session of our National Assembly, when speaking, asked about the Business Law and the answer I heard was that it had been evaluated that it was not yet or that we were not yet at the right time for approval.
If you were among us, my friend Goyo would have looked at me on the side and I would have told me very short, but smiling: “My brother, how does anyone know when the right time is?”
Undoubtedly, doing the right things at the right time is a good guarantee of success; The same thing happens to form and train a ball team that to cross the street.
To conduct the economy of a country, it is even more important, because in the end a ball party can be lost and, if we do it wrong crossing the street, because we pay ourselves, or in a hospital or in some small container.
It does not happen the same when it comes to the strategy and economic policy of a country, because then the destinies of all are decided and the dreams of many can become eternal nightmares, and make disenchantment a daily way of existence.
The data of the report of the first semester of this 2025 made public by the Ministry of Economy in the Assembly leave no doubt about the poor performance of our economy in a general way.
Even when we have the good news of the containment of the fiscal deficit and the rhythm of increased inflation, both positive results, their effects on the purchasing capacity of citizens’ income and on the dynamics of the Cuban productive system are practically null.
Of the seven prioritized objectives announced by the Minister of Economy in December 2024, few have been achieved in this first semester.
The first of them –continue advancing in the implementation of the macroeconomic stabilization program, with actions that contribute to the gradual reduction of existing imbalances-, it will remain in the shadow while these positive symptoms related to the fiscal deficit and inflation do not alleviate the growing needs of the majority of the country’s population.
The exchange rate in the so -called informal currency market remains unfavorable: a few days ago the 400 pesos barrier was broken per dollar, a very clear sign that the real causes of the depreciation of the Cuban weight remain very solid.
The increase in export income, The second of those objectives, has in the Bad tourism performance (81% of travelers and 75% of visitors compared to the same period of 2024) and in the results of this sugar harvest, where the levels of production reached return to 1817, their worst enemy.
Other sectors, including medical services, do not show significant recovery.
Increase national production It is the third prioritized objective; Some productions increased, but the impact of that increase in supply and prices has barely been noticeable.
Ensure resources for defense and internal order. Another objective. In the absence of information in this regard, it is possible to imagine that this priority has been fulfilled, among other reasons because the FAR business system generates its own resources that allow it not to depend on the results of the national economy.
Gradually recover the National Electroenergetic System (SEN); The fifth of these objectives does not give signs that relevant results will be achieved despite the effort made, which includes the redirection of the investment towards the sector and the construction and commissioning of the photovoltaic parks.
Today the generation and its limitations are fundamental, but the infrastructure associated with the transmission is also in a critical state. Without electrical energy it will be very difficult to achieve a significant change in the dynamics of our economy.
The sixth objective, attend the priorities of social policies, health, education, with special attention to people, families, homes and communities in a situation of vulnerabilityit seems like a giant task if we attend to the continued deterioration of the purchasing capacity of families, to the increase in poverty and marginality and the dynamics of prices of assets and services of first necessity.
The effort does not compare with the accumulated deterioration. The announced increase of pensions, something very necessary, will barely reach for the acquisition of a fraction of an egg cardboard.
While the objective of Incorporate with priority and opportunity the contributions of science, technology and innovation in the recovery of the economysomething very necessary for a country that suffers a permanent lack of resources of all kinds, faces a productive system where the main actor – the socialist state company – does not have enough incentives and degrees of freedom to do so dynamically and sustained.
I call attention to the fact that science, technology and innovation require financial resources and state investment, because our state business system, the great engine of this battered economy, is exhausted, decapitalized, managed by the ministerial bureaucracy and relatively away from the “technological tip worldwide worldwide.”
Foreign investment can be a great help, but has delayed more than four years the introduction of changes in the law, in regulations and procedures to create a “conducive business environment.”
In a few weeks we will be at the door of the third four -month period of this 2025. It is already known that in 2024 the negative performance was -1.1 %, although this time many have surprised the figure, given the combination of factors that were present throughout 2024.
There is no official information about GDP growth in the first half of 2025, as if hiding it to the people allowing the reality of that performance to change.
Meanwhile, ECLAC has estimated That in 2025 the GDP of Cuba will decrease again, this time at -1.5%, a behavior worse than that of 2024 and only surpassed in Latin America by Haiti (-2.3%).
The Minister of Economy in his Intervention in the National Assembly He described this second semester as challenging rightly, because it does not seem possible to expect relevant positive changes in the conditions that he defined, that prevent a positive response of the economy:
- The high external indebtedness.
- No access to development loans.
- The currency deficit.
- The lack of energy and fuel.
- The deficit of raw materials and supplies.
- The low use of industrial capacities.
- Internal and indiscipline internal mechanisms.
- International inflation.
- Geopolitical conflicts.
Without a doubt, it is possible to add some other “factors” to that list:
- The slowness in decision making (where is the law of companies?)
- The lack of consistency in the approved policies (do we finally need or do not need a dynamic and complementary non -state sector?)
- The excess of bureaucracy and bureaucrats (is the state apparatus reduced or not? When and how much?)
- The lack of sufficient incentives to incorporation into formal, state or non -state work (69.1% of the unemployed are concentrated between pre -university level, middle and university technicians).
- The absence of a money market that transmits certainty to economic actors.
It does not seem that any of these internal factors will suffer some favorable change in the next four months.
Uncertainty will continue to predominate in the international context, while the certainty that the blockade and aggressive policy of the Trump administration can increase the negative burden on the national economy and over our people.
Both are factors on which we can do little or nothing, beyond using the most important characteristic that has allowed the Homo sapiens Be at the top of the animal chain: its ability to adapt and its ability to take advantage of opportunities, even if they are meager.
The tasks defined for this second semester They represent a great challenge not only in the economic order, but also in the political order.
One of them is crucial: the creation of a exchange market and the adoption of a exchange rate that transparent economic relations between all the actors of the economy, that is, the State, families and companies. How it is implemented, it will depend on a lot that our country can break the tendency to continue decreasing year after year.
I confess that I do not know if this is the “appropriate moment”; I do not know if any of the artificial intelligence algorithms that have been created can give us a clue to what is the right time.
Almost always the finding of whether it is or is not happening later; Perhaps there is one of the reasons for the delays that we do not understand, but the more we delay, the higher the economic, social and political cost. That is something we have already seen. There are the facts.
