Of the 63 state companies that operate in the province of Las Tunas, 25 received million-dollar payments from the Government without any productive support. The fact, that the local press He unambiguously described it as a “scam”, it supposed the total cost of 29,924,000 pesos only in January and motivated a meeting of local leaders, but the analysis was “not at all rigorous” for the seriousness of the crime.
It is not the first time that the province “bleeds” the allocated budget, details the official newspaper 26. In 2022, the numbers were similar and company managers did not have to answer for the contrast between investment and results either.
The list of breaches is long and involves the most important companies in Las Tunas. Although the newspaper does not provide production data, it does reveal the amount that each one received. The Poultry Company had 3,551,000 pesos; that of Pharmacy and Optics, 3,394,800; that of Construction and Assembly, 2,534,700; and the steel company Acinox, which presents itself as “the leading company in Cuba in world exports of products offered by the metal industries”, 2,363,800.
Other companies that paid the salaries of their workers with hardly any profits in January were Agroforestal, Tabaco Torcido, Acopio, the Food Wholesaler, Raw Materials, Duralmet and even the Las Tunas Electric Company. In addition, each of the Commerce companies – and several sugar and agricultural companies – in the municipalities of Manatí, Jesús Menéndez and Amancio are in the same situation.
“The directors of these entities continue without responding with the rigor that the matter implies”
The worst thing, laments the newspaper, is not the waste of public money, but the inaction of managers and their provincial and national supervisors. “Anyone without the required responsibility can make an improper payment of that magnitude, but they immediately have to answer for it,” the newspaper describes. However, the reality is different: “The directors of these entities continue without responding with the rigor that the matter implies.”
The newspaper asks that those responsible be “prosecuted by the competent courts” for squandering the state budget. However, there seems to be no will either in the provincial government or in the “nuclei” that the Communist Party maintains within each company.
“It is literally not taking place”, ditch newspaper 26arguing that paying millions in amounts to unproductive companies is a violation of Resolution 6/2016, for the application of payment methods in the state sector.
“Lack of control”, “lack of demand” and fraud by the board of directors are some of the characteristics that the report attributes to business management in Las Tunas. “It is true that there are companies that for various reasons have seen their main management limited and their workforce decreases their production and sometimes becomes almost nil, but formulas must be found to reorient the work and find other options that allow salaries to be sustained And that is rarely done,” he admits.
Without mentioning at any time the US embargo – the preferred excuse of the Cuban media and leaders to justify their inefficiency – the article defines a clear cause for the loss of the almost 30 million destined for Las Tunas in January, but does not dare to call it by its name: the corruption of businessmen and their impunity before state supervisors.
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