Cuba’s Communist Party convenes extraordinary session to debate new economic measures

Cu­ba’s pow­er­ful Com­mu­nist Par­ty, or PCC, called an ex­tra­or­di­nary ple­nary ses­sion Wednes­day, days af­ter Pres­i­dent Miguel Díaz-Canel’s an­nounced an eco­nom­ic re­form pack­age aimed at open­ing up the strug­gling is­land’s econ­o­my.

Al­so Wednes­day, in a sur­prise move, the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly was al­so con­vened for Thurs­day to fol­low up on the par­ty meet­ing.

Both ses­sions come at a crit­i­cal time for Cu­ba, as it grap­ples with the ef­fects of a U.S. en­er­gy block­ade aimed at forc­ing a change in the is­land’s eco­nom­ic mod­el.

The deep­en­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis that has gripped Cu­ba for the past years — in­ten­si­fied by the en­er­gy em­bar­go en­act­ed un­der U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump — con­tin­ues to dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect the is­land’s most vul­ner­a­ble. Per­sis­tent black­outs, cuts to the state-run food ra­tion sys­tem, and se­vere short­ages of wa­ter and med­i­cine have trans­formed dai­ly life in­to an or­deal for many of the is­land’s near­ly 10 mil­lion res­i­dents.

Last week, Díaz-Canel told jour­nal­ists that the up­com­ing re­forms would ex­pand au­tho­riza­tions for pri­vate com­pa­nies, which were first le­gal­ized five years ago. With­out pro­vid­ing spe­cif­ic de­tails or dead­lines, the pres­i­dent not­ed that the plan will al­so al­low Cubans liv­ing both on the is­land and abroad to in­vest in tourism, while grant­i­ng state-run com­pa­nies greater free­dom to part­ner with the pri­vate sec­tor.

He al­so fore­cast changes to the cur­ren­cy ex­change mar­ket and raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty that pri­vate busi­ness­es could im­port and ex­port goods di­rect­ly, by­pass­ing the state in­ter­me­di­a­tion cur­rent­ly re­quired.

Ahead of the ses­sions, Díaz-Canel not­ed that Cu­ba’s par­lia­ment is al­ready con­sid­er­ing a law to down­size the state, a move that would slash the num­ber of min­istries from 27 to 20.

The PCC, the on­ly legal­ly rec­og­nized par­ty, does not run elec­tions. It is led by Díaz-Canel as first sec­re­tary and its con­sti­tu­tion­al role is to guide the di­rec­tion of all branch­es of gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing the leg­is­la­ture. —HA­VANA (AP)

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Sto­ry by AN­DREA RO­DRÍGUEZ | As­so­ci­at­ed Press