Economist Pedro Monreal: "Cuba has missed the train of the reforms in China and Vietnam."

The Cuban economist Pedro Monreal published a strong analysis on his Facebook page «The State as Such» this Monday, in which he states that Cuba has lost the historical opportunity to replicate the successful economic reforms of China and Vietnam, and warns that the current crisis could be leading to a "controlled collapse."

"Cuba has missed the train of the reforms in China and Vietnam, and there is no evidence that the conditions currently exist to replicate the essential framework and economic success of those 'controlled' reforms," wrote Monreal.

The economist lists the particularities of the Cuban environment that make this path unviable: prioritization of political control over economic efficiency, a bureaucratic view of management, U.S. sanctions, high risk for investors, and distrust from the Cuban diaspora.

According to Monreal, a key condition for the success of China and Vietnam was the availability of foreign currency reserves and international integration, understood as trade liberalization, attraction of foreign investment, and normalization of diplomatic relations.

"The reforms would not have been viable without openness. Foreign currency allowed for the importation of machinery and know-how, while international integration spaces facilitated access to markets and capital," he noted.

The economist emphasizes that the availability of foreign currency and international integration was not only a prior chronological requirement but also functional: "internal reforms (decentralization, incentives) needed external leverage to scale and sustain themselves."

Replicating the Chinese-Vietnamese model in Cuba would require, according to Monreal, "a combination of internal political will to replace the current economic model and favorable external economic and geopolitical conditions for the Cuban government, which seem unlikely in the short term."

The analysis arrives at a time of accelerated economic deterioration. The Economist Intelligence Unit projects a decline of the Cuban GDP by 7.2% in 2026, accumulating a contraction of 23% since 2019, while Monreal himself has warned that the decline could exceed 15%.

This projection contrasts sharply with that of the regime: Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz presented a GDP growth of +1% for 2026 as a "guideline" to revive the economy, a figure that international and independent organizations dispute.

Monreal's diagnosis also contrasts with the promises of Díaz-Canel, who in October 2021 claimed that Cuba would develop an economic model "better than that of China and Vietnam," a promise that never materialized.

The Chinese reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 and the Vietnamese reforms known as Đổi Mới, starting in 1986, transformed planned economies into export powerhouses under a single-party system. China increased its GDP tenfold over four decades, while Vietnam raised its GDP per capita from around $230 in 1986 to approximately $4,300 in 2024, according to the World Bank.

Monreal has shown in recent analyses the collapse of key productive sectors, such as bus production, which dropped from 473 units in 2019 to a projected 12 in 2026, a reduction of 97.5%, and pig production, which plummeted by 95.2% between 2017 and 2023.

"The risk today for the Cuban government is not so much having lost the opportunity to try to replicate a 'controlled' reform in the style of China or Vietnam, but rather that the current economic crisis is turning into a 'controlled' collapse," warned Monreal, marking the most serious warning he has issued to date regarding the direction of the Cuban economy.