The Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz concluded a three-day training session for heads of Business Groups and Boards of Government this Sunday, held at the Higher School of State and Government Leaders, where he defended the 176 economic transformations approved in June as a means to "update" the Cuban business system without abandoning socialism.
The event, sponsored by the National Institute of State Business Assets, served as a platform for Marrero to reiterate an argument that the regime has been maintaining for months amid the widespread skepticism of the populace: that clearly market-driven measures —such as business autonomy, the possibility of bankruptcy and liquidation, the transformation of state entities into commercial companies, private banking, and private exchange houses— are actually tools to "perfect socialism".
The head of government insisted that the socialist state-owned enterprise remains, by constitutional mandate, “the main subject of the national economy,” and that the reforms aim for greater efficiency, decentralization, and productive linkages with non-state management forms.
After the meeting, Marrero Cruz provided statements to the press in which he celebrated signs of change among business leaders. “Today, our socialist state enterprise has the same conditions to act and make decisions as any other non-state economic actor,” he affirmed, as reported by the state channel Canal Caribe.
«We are already seeing substantial changes, even witnessing transformations in the very models, and undoubtedly, this will boost productive capabilities: there will be more supply, we will gradually manage to lower prices and alleviate this inflation that harms our economy so much,» added the regime leader.
The Prime Minister also announced progress in the implementation of the package: out of the 176 approved transformations, 158 are already underway with the support of 194 legal norms, representing approximately 89% of the total. The central legal piece of the reform is the of the Cuban State Business System, published in the Official Gazette on September 2 and effective from the 9th of that month.
The speech included an unusual acknowledgment: «We know that there is a lot of uncertainty within the population». Nonetheless, the Prime Minister remained optimistic and stated that «those forces are already beginning to be unleashed».
This is the third or fourth time in a few months that Marrero Cruz has convened or closed training events for managers at the same school. Since June, he has repeatedly stated in various forums that the main obstacle to reforms is the "change of mindset" of the cadres in the state apparatus, urging them to abandon the logic of centralized planning. In June, he had already warned that "the greatest transformation must be in our way of thinking".
The Cuban population, however, greets these promises with the fresh memory of the failures of the Guidelines of 2011 and the Task Order of 2021, and without seeing concrete results in the face of the ongoing crisis of blackouts, shortages of food and medicine, and inflation.
The first private currency exchange in Cuba only opened on September 17, selling the dollar above the official rate, a scenario that illustrates the gap between official rhetoric and the economic reality that Cubans face every day.
Now the most important thing is left, which is to be able to see those results, acknowledged Marrero Cruz himself before the press.
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