Overview
- Cuba’s National Assembly, which approved the 176-measure package on Friday, voted to authorize a broad opening of the economy that expands private business rights, decentralizes some authority and begins financial liberalization.
- President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other leaders said the reforms do not abandon socialism and that the Communist Party will retain political control over the state and strategic sectors.
- The program is not yet operational because it requires hundreds of legal changes and dozens of new laws or decrees, including the modification of more than 140 existing rules and the drafting of many implementing regulations.
- Key concrete steps in the plan include allowing state firms to convert into joint-stock companies, removing the 100-employee cap on private firms, permitting private activity in agriculture and tourism, opening to foreign and diaspora investment, and planning a digital, real-time foreign-exchange market and private banking entry.
- The reforms were driven by a deep economic crisis from U.S. sanctions, fuel shortages and blackouts and carry near-term risks for households because subsidy cuts and currency moves could push prices up before production or wages recover.