Cuba’s president pushes for ‘urgent’ changes to island’s economic and business model

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Cuban Pres­i­dent Miguel Díaz-Canel said Mon­day that his gov­ern­ment should “im­me­di­ate­ly” fo­cus on im­ple­ment­ing ur­gent trans­for­ma­tions to the is­land’s eco­nom­ic and so­cial mod­el as oil re­serves in the Caribbean coun­try dwin­dle.

The com­ments made dur­ing a meet­ing of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters come as Cu­ba feels the squeeze of a re­cent oil block­ade cou­pled with a halt in oil ship­ments from Venezuela af­ter the U.S. at­tacked the South Amer­i­can coun­try in Jan­u­ary.

“We must fo­cus, im­me­di­ate­ly, on im­ple­ment­ing the ur­gent, most nec­es­sary trans­for­ma­tions that must be made to the eco­nom­ic and so­cial mod­el,” he was quot­ed as say­ing by state-owned me­dia.

Díaz-Canel said the push to trans­form Cu­ba’s eco­nom­ic and so­cial mod­el are tied to busi­ness and mu­nic­i­pal au­ton­o­my and the re­siz­ing of the state ap­pa­ra­tus, gov­ern­ment and in­sti­tu­tions, among oth­er things, ac­cord­ing to state-owned me­dia.

He called on mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties to man­age is­sues in­clud­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment; eco­nom­ic part­ner­ships be­tween the state and non-state sec­tors; and in­vest­ments with Cubans re­sid­ing abroad, ac­cord­ing to state-owned me­dia.

Prime Min­is­ter Manuel Mar­rero Cruz said Cu­ba’s pri­or­i­ties are fo­cused on food pro­duc­tion and changes to the is­land’s pow­er grid as se­vere out­ages and in­ter­rup­tions in fu­el sup­ply per­sist.

The min­is­ter of en­er­gy and mines, Vi­cente de la O Levy, was quot­ed by state me­dia as say­ing that progress in de­vel­op­ing a tran­si­tion strat­e­gy by mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties is still slow de­spite the dis­tri­b­u­tion of so­lar pan­els to doc­tors, teach­ers and chil­dren. He said mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties need to have a sus­tain­abil­i­ty strat­e­gy that re­lies on their own re­sources.

Last month, Cu­ba im­ple­ment­ed aus­tere fu­el-sav­ing mea­sures, in­clud­ing halt­ing some pub­lic trans­porta­tion and mov­ing class­es on­line.

Last week, the U.S. Trea­sury De­part­ment slight­ly eased re­stric­tions on the sale of Venezue­lan oil to Cu­ba, but the is­land’s en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic cri­sis is ex­pect­ed to per­sist.

In ad­di­tion to its en­er­gy woes, Cu­ba is strug­gling with a sharp in­crease in U.S. sanc­tions that have stripped the is­land of near­ly $8 bil­lion in rev­enue from March 2024 to Feb­ru­ary 2025, a loss that is near­ly 50% high­er com­pared with the pre­vi­ous pe­ri­od, ac­cord­ing to gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics. —HA­VANA (AP)