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The Cuban regime announced this Thursday that micro, small, and medium enterprises, cooperatives, and other non-state actors will be allowed to deposit cash foreign currency into bank accounts and withdraw it in the same currency, without mandatory conversion to Cuban pesos, as presented by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz at the Third Extraordinary Session of the National Assembly of People's Power.
The measure, included in Axis 1 of the reform package, states that deposits are "subject to a declaration of the lawful origin of funds and the right of withdrawal," according to the official text presented at the session held at the Convention Center in Havana.
This authorization reverses a policy that has been in effect since June 21, 2021, when the Central Bank of Cuba suspended the acceptance of cash deposits in dollars within the banking system, a measure that particularly affected private businesses dealing with foreign currency from tourism and remittances.
The announcement is part of a package of 176 transformation proposals grouped into 23 axes, which the regime describes as the most profound since the Special Period of the 1990s.
In the banking and financial sector, the reforms also include allowing the opening of accounts in foreign currencies by legal and natural persons without prior administrative authorization, as well as encouraging private capital participation in banking through corporate and universal licenses for private companies, cooperatives, and foreign investment.
The package also includes the creation of a real-time digital exchange market with authorized agents, a currency auction system, and the formalization of remittances through the role of a "last mile payment agent" via a private channel.
One of the most drastic measures of the financial axis is the implementation of "successive devaluations of the national currency to reduce exchange rate disparities," with the warning that "companies that cannot withstand the devaluation will be liquidated."
The regime also announced that the scope of the partial dollarization of the economy will be expanded in business and commercial operations, and that limits on bank transfers and withdrawals will be eliminated for both individuals and legal entities.
Among the measures for the non-state private sector, the package also removes the cap of 100 workers—beyond that number, businesses will be classified as private companies—and allows an individual to be the owner of more than one company and hold shares in multiple companies simultaneously.
The session featured the remote participation of Raúl Castro and the in-person presence of Miguel Díaz-Canel. Marrero Cruz presented the package as a response to what he described as "the most complex context the country has faced since the special period," attributing the crisis primarily to U.S. sanctions, while failing to acknowledge the impact of six decades of a centralized economic model as a structural cause of the collapse.
The package was initially announced by Díaz-Canel on June 12, discussed at the Plenary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party on June 17, and formally presented to the National Assembly this Thursday, convened by Agreement 599-X of the Council of State.
The proposals still need to be debated and approved by the deputies; of the 390 proposals received, the regime accepted 66.7% and incorporated 69 additional recommendations from the Political Bureau into the final document.
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