HAVANA, Cuba.- In the most recent meeting of the Council of Ministers, President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez outlined the way in which the Castroite hierarchy expects the national economy to behave in the coming year 2023.
The ruler indicated food production, stabilizing the operation of the National Electro-energy System, increasing exports, stimulating foreign investment, boosting tourism, reducing the budget deficit, improving the application of the tax system – that is, charging them more taxes on non-state economic actors — and attenuate social inequalities. The latter were encouraged, among other things, by the permanence of the stores in Freely Convertible Currency (MLC), to which the majority of the population does not have access.
The Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil, also present at the meeting, also referring to the characteristics that the economy must have in 2023, pointed out that “the first goal that we have set for the 2023 Economy Plan is get as close as possible to the conditions that the economy had in 2019”.
2019, of course, was a period of better behavior for economic indicators than 2020 and 2021, these years marked by the coronavirus pandemic. However, if we compare it with previous years, especially 2017 and 2018, a general drop in the levels of production and services is observed. That is to say, that already in 2019 the exhaustion of a failed economic model can be seen. Let’s see the information in this regard provided by the firm Consulting Havana Group and the Statistical Yearbook of Cuba 2021.
Among the activities that contribute the most income to the Cuban economy, only the reception of remittances was better in 2019. That year, 25 million dollars more entered the country than in 2018. But the arrival of foreign tourists decreased by 436,352 visitors. Similarly, Cuban medical missions abroad decreased in 2019.
Exports of Cuban goods and merchandise in 2019 were the lowest in 14 years (since 2005), while the amount of imports —mainly due to the weak external finances of the regime— were the lowest in ten years (as of 2009). The latter, without a doubt, began to mark the shortage of essential products in the markets. A shortage that would reach its peak in 2020 and 2021.
The sugar harvest 2019-2020, with a production of 1,183,000 tons of sugar, was the second lowest in the five-year period that began with the 2015-2016 milling.
In 2109, many productions in the textile industry decreased, as well as the production of cement and steel, two lines of great importance for construction and the investment plan.
And with respect to the productions that support the population’s diet, 2019 was lower than 2018 in the production of root vegetables, vegetables, cereals, tobacco, citrus fruits, milk, eggs, and the capture of fish.
Taking the above into account, it is not difficult to imagine that, if the authorities’ wish is fulfilled, in the sense that the economy approaches the performance achieved in 2019, there will be no true recovery, and therefore the standard of living will not improve. of the suffering Cuban on foot.
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