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The recent leak of internal financial documents from GAESA, which revealed the existence of over 18 billion dollars in current assets, has sparked an intense debate in the press and on social media.
However, for the Cuban economist Pedro Monreal, what is most revealing is not just the figures—whose credibility is plausible but impossible to independently verify—but the normalization of a more serious fact: Cuban citizens are excluded from access to crucial information about the military conglomerate that controls a significant part of the country's economy.
In a recent article published on his Substack, Monreal recalled that, despite the legitimate interest in quantitative analysis, discussions about GAESA's numbers inevitably venture into the realm of conjecture.
"It doesn't matter how acceptable the contrasting data may be, the analysis remains tainted by the speculative nature of the 'GAESA figures'," he explained. The economist compared the attitude of the Cuban government to that of "a carnival magician: nothing over here, nothing over there...", noting that the official response has been, by omission, a resounding silence.
An institutionalized opacity
Even without complete data, there are proven qualitative elements about GAESA that sketch a troubling profile.
Monreal listed several: it involves a military conglomerate of anonymous societies that operate in civilian commercial activities; it controls strategic sectors such as tourism, retail, and telecommunications; and it manages significant amounts of foreign currency due to its monopolistic position.
The most serious aspect, from a political standpoint, is that it does not provide public accountability nor is it subject to oversight by the General Comptroller's Office of the Republic, an institutional safeguard that allows it to withhold information and resources without citizen control.
For Monreal, GAESA is the spearhead of dollarization in Cuba. With its dominance in foreign currency trade and services such as communications, alongside “abusive monopolistic prices,” it acts as an unyielding extractor of foreign currency from Cuban families.
In practice, it channels dollars from the pockets of citizens into an opaque business network that does not clarify the use of those funds.
Four urgent debates
Beyond the figures, the economist proposed focusing the debate on four key issues:
1. The unnecessary nature of a military conglomerate monopolizing the civilian economy. From a development perspective, there is no justification for a military structure to concentrate strategic and profitable sectors.
2. The fate of the national income freed by wage compression. Monreal asked where the portion of GDP that was previously allocated to compensating workers has gone, and which is now available due to the decline of wages as a proportion of the product.
3. Reduce opacity and demand accountability. GAESA should be subject to independent audits and mechanisms for citizen oversight that currently do not exist.
4. Partially dollarize the national budget. While he believes that dollarization is a mistake, Monreal acknowledged that it is a reality and proposed that the currencies collected by corporations like GAESA be transparently included in the state budget, so that they directly benefit the population.
A model that concentrates power and weakens rights
The background of this debate goes beyond the economy: it involves the relationship between power, transparency, and citizens' rights in Cuba.
The combination of military monopoly, opaque legal structure, and lack of oversight makes GAESA the most powerful economic entity in the country, surpassing its civilian institutions and without effective checks and balances.
The question that lingers, and which Monreal announced he will address in a future statement, is whether the well-being of Cuban citizens requires — or can afford — the leadership of a military conglomerate whose shareholders remain anonymous and whose operations are untouchable.
In a context where economic information is treated as state secret and authorities refuse to explain the fate of billions in foreign currencies, GAESA's opacity is not just an accounting issue: it reflects a model that extracts resources from the population without accountability, while the country sinks into a humanitarian crisis.
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