HAVANA – Cuba will open up more of the country’s retail services to the private sector next year, allowing Cubans to operate various services such as appliance and watch repair, and locksmith and carpentry shops, official media has reported.
The measures are the latest by President Raul Castro in his attempt to reinvigorate Cuba’s struggling Soviet-style economy by reducing the role of the state and encouraging more private initiative. A resolution published in the official gazette yesterday said the reforms would take effect on January 1st.
Earlier this year, the Cuban government turned over about 1,500 state barber shops and beauty salons to employees. Former state employees now pay a monthly fee for the shop where they buy supplies, pay taxes and charge what the market will bear.
Shortly after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, all businesses in Cuba were taken over by the state. However, since the former leader handed power to his brother in 2008, the policy has been openly criticised as a mistake.
Ordinary Cubans have long complained about dismal state services, including small retail services, which they say have deteriorated because of a theft of resources and a shortage of sufficient supplies.
Cuba has been moving in the last year to liberalise regulations over private economic activity. Since then, tens of thousands of Cubans have taken out licences “to work for themselves”, a euphemism used by the government to describe operating family businesses.
Cuba plans to have 35 per cent to 40 per cent of the labour force working in the “non-state” sector by 2016, compared with 15 per cent at the close of 2010.
Raul Castro, faced with stagnating production and mounting foreign debt, has made it clear the economy must be overhauled if the socialist system he and his ailing brother Fidel installed is to survive. Moving most retail services to the “non-state” sector is one of more than 300 reforms approved by the ruling Communist Party earlier this year to “update” the economy.
The measures aim to introduce market forces in the agriculture and retail services sectors, cut subsidies and lift restrictions on individual activity that once prohibited the sale and purchase of homes and cars.
The Communist Party daily Granma said yesterday the moving of thousands of state retail services to a leasing arrangement would be done gradually throughout 2012.
Economy Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez told a year-end session of the National Assembly last week the number of state jobs would be reduced by 170,000 next year, with 240,000 new jobs likely to be added to the “non-state” sector.
Thousands of state taxi drivers are expected to move to leasing arrangements next year. Some state food services are also expected to be allowed to form co-operatives.
Cuba, which is preparing for a visit by Pope Benedict XVI next spring, will release 2,900 prisoners in the coming days for humanitarian reasons, including some convicted of crimes against “the security of the state”, the Cuban government said last week.
In an official note, the government did not directly link the release with the pope’s visit, but said the prisoners would be freed after “numerous” requests by family members and religious institutions. – (Reuters)