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A report from the non-governmental organization Food Monitor Program (FMP) warns that the Cuban socioeconomic framework intertwines corruption, clientelism, and discretion in the operation of the private sector.
The organization, which monitors food security on the island, states that although there is a formal legal framework for micro, small, and medium enterprises, in practice, informal systems of privilege operate that determine who gains access to resources, permits, and institutional protection.
According to the analysis, the state promotion of MIPYMES was presented as a policy for economic openness and dynamism.
However, its implementation has been marked by selectivities and implicit political limits that have created a divide between politically backed enterprises and businesses focused on mere survival.
The report describes that actors aligned with state structures and family or administrative networks linked to the institutional apparatus concentrate the greatest opportunities for accumulation.
In other words, private businesses in Cuba, linked to the regime's elite, enjoy benefits and privileges. Two examples are the businesses of Sandro Castro, the grandson of dictator Fidel Castro, and the notable situation of Tamara Marrero Cruz, sister of Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz, who lives a life of privilege in a parallel Cuba that has nothing to do with that of the average citizen.
These businesses have easier access to foreign currency, imports, regulatory stability, and tolerance towards inspections, emphasized FMP.
In contrast, other ventures operate under high uncertainty, frequent oversight, and arbitrary restrictions.
FMP emphasizes that authorized entrepreneurship is subordinate to the logic of power.
Although there is a regulatory framework, the actual functioning depends on unwritten rules, discretionary allocation of licenses, privileged access to hard currency, and selective monitoring of wholesale markets.
The State, the document adds, reinforces these asymmetries through monopolies, unevenly applied price caps, and restrictions on the social purpose of numerous SMEs, consolidating a system where private accumulation is concentrated among politically reliable actors.
The report concludes that advancing towards true economic justice would require real equality of conditions, transparent access to inputs and imports, credit, foreign currency at a realistic exchange rate, and impartial oversight independent of political affiliation or loyalty.
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