US Government will implement measures to support Cuban MSMEs

The president's administrationJoe Bidenannounced that it is willing toimplement measures to ease restrictions imposed on Cuba in order to allow greater US financial support for small businesses.

The measures, which probablywill allow Cuban businessmen to access the banking systemAmerican, "will make life easier for MSMEs," said lawyer Pedro Freyre, from Miami, referring to micro, small and medium-sized companies.

Although limited, it would be a step to try tohelp private companies struggling to survive in the island's shattered economy, according to a report fromBloomberg.

The US will announce regulatory changes aimed at strengthening the business sector on the island this week, in the context of Miguel Díaz-Canel's visit to New York on the occasion of the United Nations General Assembly.

"The Biden administration sees entrepreneurs as Cuba's best hope for growing its economy and stopping the departure of emigrants from the island," said a State Department official.

Helping entrepreneurs is "something that has bipartisan support, because Republicans, of course, agree with anything that boosts private industry and private enterprise in Cuba," according to Freyre, a Democrat who actively participated in the debates. politicians during President Barack Obama's attempted detente with Cuba.

Ricardo Herrero, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, assured that the measures "will detail how Cuban businessmen can open bank accounts in the United States and then have access to those bank accounts from within Cuba."

Cuba is suffering its worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago, with blackouts, shortages and rampant inflation.

However, Biden's team "has not shown any appetite to reengage at the level of the Obama administration," said José Cárdenas, who worked on Latin American issues in the George W. Bush administration. "There is not going to be Normalization 2.0. They really see little positive side, politically, to such an initiative."