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The Vice Prime Minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga acknowledged this Friday at the XXII Congress of the CTC that without generating wealth, it is impossible to sustain the distribution of resources and advance toward the social model advocated by the Cuban regime.
During the presentation of the Government's 2026 Economic and Social Program and the 176 economic and social measures, the official highlighted the need to increase production and efficiency amid an economic crisis that he described as one of the most complex faced by the country, according to a report from the official portal Cubadebate.
The Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment also summarized that vision with a phrase that marked his speech: "Without energy, there cannot be an economy. Without energy, we cannot produce. We produce with limitations; the economy comes to a standstill, and wealth is not generated. If wealth is not generated, it cannot be distributed. That is the principle of socialism: the fair distribution of the wealth created in society."
Pérez-Oliva attributed the economic difficulties to the sanctions imposed by the United States and stated that these aim to isolate Cuba in the economic, commercial, banking, and financial sectors.
However, his intervention also exposed structural problems within the national economy by acknowledging the impossibility of maintaining the current subsidy scheme.
One of the most significant announcements was the decision to gradually eliminate universal subsidies for the state-owned enterprise system. As explained, the budget currently allocates 92 billion pesos to subsidize businesses, of which nearly half corresponds to electricity rates.
"The business system must operate entirely without state subsidies and must be self-managed," stated the Vice Prime Minister, who also acknowledged that maintaining those levels of support would require "levels of productivity and efficiency that we are not currently achieving."
The official also defended the abandonment of generalized subsidies for the population and their replacement with targeted mechanisms aimed at vulnerable individuals.
"Our economy cannot continue, simply because it is a mathematical equation, applying equal product subsidies to the entire population. The economy cannot sustain it," he asserted.
The statements reflect a significant shift in the official discourse, which for decades portrayed universal subsidies as one of the main achievements of the Cuban system, and now considers them financially unfeasible amidst an economy unable to generate the necessary wealth to sustain them.
The Government Program 2026 that was presented is the result of nearly 100,000 meetings held across the country since December 2023, with the participation of nearly two million people and over 196,000 proposals received. The final version includes 163 actions and 45 indicators, surpassing the 2025 edition.
The three priorities that garnered the most citizen proposals were macroeconomic stabilization, social policies, and food production.
Pérez-Oliva noted that these same axes underpin the 176 transformations approved on June 18 and 19 by the Central Committee of the Party, the National Assembly, and the Council of Ministers.
The package of measures includes the authorization of private banking, foreign direct investment in private businesses, the removal of the 100-worker limit for small and medium-sized enterprises, price liberalization, and the gradual introduction of value-added tax. The U.S. State Department described these reforms as "superficial smoke signals."
The congress also featured an address by the leader Miguel Díaz-Canel, who also emphasized the idea of creating wealth to sustain the reforms in a speech that was unprecedented in official rhetoric.
"To defend that, we must produce, we must create wealth, and we must be able to distribute that wealth with a sense of justice," he noted.
According to the Cuban economist Mauricio de Miranda, without democratic checks and balances, the reforms could lead to a transition that benefits party elites transformed into oligarchs through opaque privatizations, which he described as a "Russian-style transition."
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