Economist Emilio Morales, director and CEO of Havana Consulting Group, believes that if the Cuban economy continues to deteriorate, we are on the way to a "Haitinization" of the country. In an interview granted toCyberCuba, warns that the dollar will continue to rise on the island and that there is only one way to stop the depreciation of the Cuban peso and that is with a change in the system, going out into the streets to ask the regime to account.
CiberCuba: What can Cuban families on the Island expect from the economy?
Emilio Morales: The only option that families have is to go out into the streets to demand accountability from the Government, which has ignored the basic needs of the population. In the beginning, he sold the population the idea that they were going to have a prosperous future, with free health care, free education, and certain needs satisfactorily covered. In the end the Government has mutated into a mafia that controls Gaesa and that has ignored all those obligations to the population. Then the population has the full right to hold the Government accountable, which in the end is the one that does not let them prosper. It is the one that does not let them generate wealth. Even the Constitution itself pursues the accumulation of wealth. So under these MSME laws, where even if you earn the dollars in your legal, free, transparent business, they don't let you use them. They appropriate those dollars. Everything is a mechanism to drown you, suffocate you. So, under this, what do you have left? The only thing left for you is to survive. As? You have to hold the Government accountable, somehow. Try to achieve a new system. There is no other way out.
Does this mean that the dollar will continue to rise? Is the Cuban peso going to continue depreciating?
To the extent that the Government is unable to solve all these problems, the dollar will continue to rise because demand will be greater and supply will continue to be lower. It is an equation that is not going to stop. And to the extent that they continue to be so clumsy and implement such crazy measures, without releasing the productive forces, which is the main obstacle, they have not done it as it should be, starting with agriculture, which is what is going to change everything. .. When China and Vietnam changed their system, they started with agriculture, but they do not want people to have prosperity and for people to start accumulating wealth.
Emilio believes that there is an economist who tells this to Díaz-Canel in Cuba... or not
They have economists and everyone tells them so. The Russians tell them, the Chinese tell them, the Vietnamese tell them and it is a problem of the power elite who are clinging to power and do not want to lose it, do not want to take risks in any way.
Yesterday Díaz-Canel did a program called From the Presidency, explaining if there will be rice and bread between now and June. When you see that, the person who is in charge of a country dedicating himself to those things, you can't imagine Biden or Emmanuel Macron giving a speech to talk about food distribution. Have you seen a situation like the one Cuba is experiencing today? Has this happened in another country in the world?
Right now, I don't think so. If this continues, we can say that there could be a process of Haitinization of Cuba. Crime levels in Cuba are rising alarmingly. Every day they kill someone on the street to take a cell phone or 20 pesos and nothing happens. However, a person comes out with a sign and there is the Police, State Security, counterintelligence. Fifty people to catch a person and take him to court. Not to criminals. It becomes chaos; It becomes a fight for survival. Hunger is a bad advisor. When people don't have anything to eat, they don't believe in anything. Those people who left on March 17 in Santiago and other cities in the East, left because they had nothing to eat and who are they going to complain to if they do not live in the United States. They live in Cuba and have to complain to the Government of Cuba; to the party of Cuba, to that single party that has them suffocated, suffocated, that has them starving. They are responsible for all the chaos in the country. There no one came out to say down with the embargo or down with the blockade or down with Biden. There they came out to say, Homeland and Life, Freedom, give me food and give me electricity.
From Havana Consulting Group, you have advised companies. Could companies be encouraged to invest in Cuba at this time?
No, investing in Cuba today is suicide.
What do you think?
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