Changes after protests in Cuba: regime allowed small and medium-sized businesses to operate

Cuban diet approved this Friday night the decree of law which authorizes the operation of private and state SMEs, a measure which advances towards economic reforms in the socialist country, in which the public enterprise predominates.

“The Council of State approved the decree-law ‘On micro, small and medium-sized enterprises’, which facilitates their integration in a coherent way into the legal system as an actor that affects the productive transformation of the countryA note said on the website of the National Assembly of People’s Power of Cuba.

This decision, long awaited by Cuban entrepreneurs, it comes nearly a month after the unprecedented July 11-12 protests erupted shouting “we are hungry” and “free” in more than 40 towns on the island, killing one, injuring dozens and detaining hundreds.

During an ordinary session of the Council of State, in which the dictator Miguel Díaz-Canel participated by videoconference, Other measures aimed at the development of non-agricultural cooperatives and self-employed or self-employed workers have been approved.

The assembly determined that SMEs can be state, private or mixed and micro-enterprises can have from 1 to 10 employees, small enterprises from 11 to 35 people and medium-sized enterprises up to 100 employees.

Last February, the Cuban regime expanded to more than 2,000 activities in which the self-employed can work in the controlled Cuban economy.

The regime said in June that certain activities authorized for the self-employed will not appear on the list of SMEs, What “computer programmer, accountant, translators and interpreters, veterinarians for loving or domestic animals, designers and certain types of advice», He indicated.

Although this is determined in the regulations which are to be published shortly.

“For the Cuban economy, not only in the economic sphere, but also in the historical sphere, this represents a giant step which will have consequences in the medium and long term” for the reconfiguration of the national economy, he said. he declared to AFP Oniel Díaz, consultant specializing in business development, communication and public affairs in Cuba.

Cuba is accelerating its reforms, while facing a deep economic crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic that has hit the tourism sector, amid the hardened US economic embargo under the governments of Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

TREATED AS A THREAT

Communist authorities in Cuba have for decades treated private entrepreneurs as a threat that must be contained, not encouraged.. Long after China and Vietnam adopted market reforms, using material prosperity to bolster an authoritarian regime, Cuba has clung to an economic model based on central planning and state control.

The July 11 protests that rocked Cuban leaders showed that this model might be your greatest vulnerability, as its weak bases are further eroded by the decades-long US embargo, additional Trump-era sanctions and now the coronavirus pandemic. The country’s economy contracted 11% last year, according to government data. Cubans spend hours in line to buy basic items they can barely afford. Hospitals have been inundated with coronavirus patients and drugs are scarce. Power outages turn the sweltering summer heat into an exploding fuse.

Many protesters and their supporters insist they are demanding freedom, not just food. Calls for democracy and radical political change have come from a wider range of Cubans who are increasingly willing to challenge the government.

But as with the rare previous episodes of civil unrest on the island, it is economic hardship, especially food shortages and blackouts, which prompted Cubans to take to the streets. Those who pressure President Joe Biden to toughen US economic sanctions insist they are the best tools to keep the pressure on.

Since July 11 the authorities cracked down with squads of police commandos and plainclothes policemen wielding batons, locked up activists and protesters and cut off internet access. Most protest activity has been quelled, but the country’s economic outlook remains so bleak that protests could erupt at any time, especially if conditions continue to deteriorate.

(With information from AFP and the Washington Post)

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