MIAMI, United States. – In a latest interview with the Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet, the Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel “mentioned” the scenario and the position of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) within the Cuban financial system, the place he alluded, even unintentionally, to the managed nature of the personal sector beneath his regime.
Díaz-Canel started by clarifying that Cuba has a “deliberate financial system that takes into consideration market alerts, however it’s not an financial system that’s primarily based on a pure market financial system.” In response to him, the Island’s financial system focuses on social justice and doesn’t observe the legal guidelines of the market.
Nonetheless, actuality reveals an financial system that fails to fulfill the fundamental wants of the inhabitants as a result of its inefficiency. Cubans are experiencing a severe disaster marked by shortages of meals and different important merchandise.
Díaz-Canel additionally identified that on the Island “there are state MSMEs and there are non-state, personal MSMEs”; and he mentioned that the personal sector has existed in Cuba for a very long time, though it has now expanded.
Concerning the expansion of micro, small and medium-sized corporations, the president talked about that they exist already “round 10,000”, however emphasised that “the primary technique of manufacturing are within the fingers of the State and are represented by state corporations.”
The president additionally admitted that there are “distortions within the relations between the state firm and state entities with non-state entities.” Nonetheless, his proposed options appear extra targeted on sustaining authorities management than on fostering a very free atmosphere for enterprise growth.
Díaz-Canel affirmed that the MSME sector “will proceed to increase” and be a part of the community of financial actors, however “it is not going to be an enemy of the Revolution.”
On this method, he made it clear that the regime will solely permit the expansion of the personal sector to the extent that it doesn’t symbolize a menace to the Authorities. As well as, he acknowledged Washington’s concern for MSMEs. “[Hay] senators, congressmen, opinion leaders in the US who say that we should help not the state sector, however that we should put cash into it to show MSMEs into brokers of change.”
“There’s a very direct intention, which we all know, of the Authorities of the US to attempt to convert this sector right into a sector of opposition to the Revolution,” he mentioned.
Though he tried the other, Díaz-Canel’s statements reveal a actuality of management, limitations and concern of financial independence that contradicts actual progress in the direction of a free market financial system.
MSMEs: facade of the regime?
Presently, MSMEs share a centralized financial situation with the socialist state firm (the primary one for the Authorities), non-agricultural cooperatives and self-employment.
Alternatively, MSMEs have launched into the nationwide market merchandise that have been scarce or didn’t exist on the Island at costs denounced as “exorbitant” by part of the inhabitants.
Though they’re acknowledged as financial models with authorized persona with their very own traits, MSMEs can’t be established in spheres resembling well being, telecommunications, vitality, protection and the media.
After the rise within the approval of MSMEs within the nation, activists and unbiased journalists have denounced that regime officers and even repressors are hiding behind the brand new corporations, introduced to the worldwide neighborhood because the “personal sector” on the Island.
Just lately, CubaNet printed a profile on Julio Martínez Ramírez, former chief of the Union of Younger Communists (UJC) and the Communist Celebration of Cuba (PCC), presently a accomplice of the MSME Gran G SRL Martínez Ramírez is a part of the wave of defenders of the Cuban regime – some even State Safety brokers, navy personnel or get together leaders – who’ve turn out to be a part of the brand new personal sector on the Island.
In that sense, the MSME Gaia Mercado has additionally been denounced, behind which is Lisa Titolo Castro, daughter of Mariela Castro Espín and the Italian photographer Paolo Titolo; Cubapack, a GAESA MSME that operates from Miami; and Sil26, the distributor of Grocery store 23, which belongs to Ángel David Fernández del Valle, grandson of the late Main Normal Sergio del Valle Jiménez.
Nonetheless, in an interview given final week to CNN en Español, one in all Cuba’s Vice Ministers of Financial system, Johana Odriozola, defended that the personal sector did exist on the Island, whose authenticity has been refuted and dismantled by US and Cuban-American politicians. , activists and media.
In reality, just lately the Cuban-American congresswoman María Elvira Salazar expressed her concern that many house owners of the so-called MSMEs are linked to the Cuban regime. The congresswoman described the Authorities of Havana as “the Hamas of the continent” and requested her colleagues on the Congress “be certain that to ship the message to the State Division that [abrir el sistema bancario estadounidense a las mipymes cubanas] “It would not be a good suggestion as a result of it could violate the embargo.”
In September 2023, it emerged that Washington might loosen up monetary restrictions on Cuba, which might particularly favor small companies on the Island, based on a report by Bloomberg citing an unidentified supply.
Regardless of the Cuban regime’s expectations a couple of drastic change in US coverage in the direction of the Island, consultants point out that that is unlikely to happen. “Serving to entrepreneurs is one thing that has bipartisan help,” based on lawyer Pedro Freyre.
Final October, the newspaper Miami Herald printed that the measures promised in mid-September by the Biden administration to help Cuban MSMEs had not solely not materialized, however remained shrouded in uncertainty.
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2024-05-17 09:48:24
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