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The Cuban regime published on Wednesday the updated version of the 2026 Government Economic and Social Program, a planning document that the Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz presented as the "compass" and "road map" to revitalize the economy, while Cuba faces a contraction of 23% of its GDP since 2019 and experiences blackouts lasting up to 20-25 continuous hours.
Marrero Cruz announced the publication through his social media, noting that the program was developed "based on the analysis of over 2 million people from various sectors of society" and that it is available on the Soberanía platform and on the official website of the Presidency of Cuba.
The document is structured into 10 general objectives, 111 specific objectives, 505 actions, and 309 indicators and targets, an expansion compared to the 2025 program, which had 106 specific objectives and 342 actions.
The text itself acknowledges critical distortions, internal macroeconomic imbalances, and severe external impacts that threaten the stability of the country, and it admits that the year 2026 began "with a pronounced fracture in the global order."
The regime attributes part of the crisis to the U.S. embargo, which it accuses of attempting to "completely block the supply of fuels" to the country, and announces that it has approved "Government Directives to address a severe fuel shortage."
The program also includes the postponement of the IX Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba —ordered by Raúl Castro in December 2025— as a motivational argument, describing it as "a call to action" and "an opportunity to seek our own solutions to our problems."
The presentation of the document contrasts with the results of the previous program: the one for 2025 only fulfilled 51 out of 90 planned directives, with sugar production at 42.5% of the plan and external revenues at 88% of what was anticipated, while GDP contracted by 4% in what the government itself described as a "war economy scenario."
By 2026, the Economist Intelligence Unit projects an additional GDP decline of 7.2%, which would increase the cumulative contraction since 2019 to 23%. The energy crisis worsened in January of this year when Venezuela stopped supplying between 25,000 and 30,000 barrels of oil per day following the capture of Nicolás Maduro, deepening the blackouts that were already affecting the population.
The economist Pedro Monreal has consistently pointed out that these programs do not address the structural causes of the crisis — the state-controlled centralized model — but rather exacerbate them, as each expansion of foreign currency trade strengthens the segmentation of the internal market.
The 2026 state budget projects a fiscal deficit of up to 74.5 billion Cuban pesos, with total expenditures of 550.59 billion compared to revenues of 484.12 billion. According to data from March 2026, 80% of Cubans believe the current crisis is worse than the Special Period of the 1990s.
Marrero Cruz announced that "in the coming days" he will inform the Cuban people about the results of the consultation, the main modifications to the program, and "the progress of its implementation."
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