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The Cuban regime announced on Thursday a restructuring of the Central Administration of the State that will reduce ministries, budgeted entities, and workforce as part of the 176 economic and social transformations presented on Thursday by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz before the National Assembly of People's Power.
This is one of the broadest reforms of the Cuban state apparatus in decades, which includes the reduction of ministries, budgeted organizations, and administrative structures at all levels of government.
The measure is part of the so-called Axis 4, dedicated to the transformations and resizing of the budgeted sector, published by the official newspaper Granma.
According to Marrero, the proposal includes a restructuring of the Central State Administration that would entail a significant reduction in the number of ministries and agencies funded by the state budget.
The leader assured that a legislative proposal is already circulating to reorganize state and government structures, with the declared aim of adapting them to the country's new economic conditions and improving the efficiency of public management.
The process would also extend to provincial and municipal administrations, where a reduction in structures and staffing levels is anticipated.
The announcement comes amid the worst economic crisis that Cuba has faced since the Special Period, a situation that the government itself has linked to falling revenues, the energy crisis, fuel shortages, and production difficulties affecting nearly all sectors of the economy.
The initiative had already begun to take shape in early June, when the National Assembly published the draft Law on the Organization of the Central State Administration.
The text proposes to reduce the number of existing ministries from 27 to 20 by merging agencies and creating new super ministries with extensive powers.
Among the planned changes is the creation of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, which would consolidate functions currently spread across various agencies related to agriculture, the food industry, sugar, fishing, and the forestry sector.
The merger of the ministries of Economy and Planning and of Finance and Prices into a single Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Planning is also being considered.
The reform also includes the establishment of the Ministry of Environment, Habitat, and Housing, as well as the Ministry of Information and Social Communication, the latter responsible for consolidating functions related to media, advertising, and institutional communication.
The reduction of the state apparatus is part of a broader package of changes that incorporates measures that were unthinkable for years within the Cuban economic model, including the authorization of private banking, the creation of private currency exchange houses, the expansion of foreign investment, the relaxation of small and medium-sized enterprises (miPYMEs), and the gradual replacement of universal subsidies with targeted assistance.
Marrero himself acknowledged before Parliament that the transformations are a response to an exceptional context and defended the need to adopt measures that would have previously been rejected by the system.
The administrative reform now aims to extend this adjustment process to the structure of the State, in an effort to reduce costs and reorganize a government apparatus that has been criticized for years, even by the authorities themselves, for its slowness, excessive procedures, and bureaucracy.
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