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The Cuban economist Pedro Monreal González published two new critical analyses on his Facebook page "The State as Such" regarding the package of 176 economic measures approved by the National Assembly on June 19, warning that crucial areas of the plan remain "nebulous" and that its implementation could worsen the living conditions of Cubans without the regime acknowledging it.
In the first of his texts, published this Thursday, Monreal highlights the modification of relative prices as the darkest aspect of the package. "A key area of the official list of 176 measures remains nebulous: the possible effects of modifying relative prices. The mere mention of actions such as the exchange rate, wages, and price formation does not allow us to anticipate their dynamics," he wrote.
To support his warning, the economist references the failure of the “Monetary Ordering” of January 2021, which promised to stabilize prices and unify the currency but ended up skyrocketing inflation. “The rapid failure of the 'ordering' was precisely due to those prices deviating from the intended design,” he recalled.
Monreal identifies four measures that he considers particularly dangerous when combined: measures 99 and 100 do not specify which exchange rate regime will be adopted or what reference will be used for devaluation; measure 9 ties state salaries to the "financial capacity" of companies; and measures 117 and 118 — decentralization and price formation with "market reference" — could increase the cost of the basic basket.
"The combination of various measures could exacerbate the deterioration of citizens' well-being. It can be debated whether this effect is inevitable, but there is no official communication warning that this deterioration could be an initial phase of the implementation of 'the 176'," he pointed out, emphasizing that the regime presents the package as a solution to the crisis, not as a possible source of further decline.
In a second analysis published this Friday, Monreal points out another area of uncertainty: the purchase of shares in state-owned enterprises converted into commercial companies. "It is striking how imprecisely the package of 176 measures addresses the purchase of shares or stakes in state-owned enterprises transformed into commercial companies. Does this include the sale of stakes to the employees of those companies?" he asked.
Measure 17 of the package states that the State will ensure its majority presence in strategic sectors and that individuals will also be able to acquire shares "in the graduality that will be defined," a formula without deadlines or precise conditions that illustrates exactly the kind of vagueness that Monreal decries.
This is not the first warning from the economist regarding the package. On June 26, he described the 176 measures as a "monster" or "deformed hybrid", and a few days earlier, on June 20, he criticized measure 8 as "anti-labor" for subordinating the salaries of state workers to the financial capacity of companies.
These criticisms arise at the worst economic moment in Cuba in decades: a cumulative contraction of over 26% since 2020, blackouts lasting between twenty and forty hours, a real inflation rate close to 70% in informal markets, and an average salary of only 15 dollars per month. Economist Javier Pérez Capdevila estimates that meeting basic needs requires at least 96,060 pesos per month, compared to an average salary that does not exceed 7,000 pesos.
To this reality is added the collapse of municipal services. In Havana, only 44 out of 106 garbage collection trucks were operational in February 2026, while the capital generated between 24,000 and 30,000 cubic meters of waste daily. Cuba recorded tens of thousands of dengue cases by the end of 2025, linked to the proliferation of mosquitoes due to the accumulation of garbage. A Cuban internet user bitterly summarized the situation in response to the official announcement of measures: "Download them and you can eat and light yourselves with the measures on paper."
The CEPAL projects a decline in the Cuban GDP of 6.5% in 2026, the worst in Latin America, with a cumulative contraction of 10.3% in the biennium 2025-2026. This backdrop leads Monreal to insist that the regime cannot continue presenting the 176 measures as a panacea without warning the population that their implementation could imply, at least in an initial phase, a rapid and widespread deterioration of living conditions.
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