The ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel defended this Friday the progress of the 176 economic and social transformations approved in June, and insisted that the process is irreversible with a phrase that summarizes the regime's stance: "The challenge is strong, but we will not stop."
The president resumed his official podcast "Desde la Presidencia," and this time he was joined by the Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz and the Minister of Justice Rosabel Gamón Verde, who provided the most detailed report to date on the implementation of the reforms, three months after their approval in an extraordinary session of the National Assembly.
Marrero Cruz summarized the work done between July and September: 160 implementation proposals were designed, and 197 legal norms of support were approved, including four laws, 29 decree-laws, and 26 decrees from the Council of Ministers.
The Prime Minister also announced that during that period, more than 3,600 new small and medium-sized enterprises (mipymes) were approved, bringing the total to 16,100 in the country, along with 448 non-state cooperatives and more than 385,000 self-employed workers.
However, Marrero himself acknowledged the central contradiction of the process: "We now have the path cleared to move forward; and in fact, we are making progress and results are already visible, although this improvement is not yet reflected in the quality of life of the population."
The ideological focus of the episode was, once again, the denial that the reforms represent a shift toward capitalism, a position that the regime has maintained from day one despite the fact that the real content of the package includes private banking, private exchange houses, buying and selling shares of state-owned companies, partial dollarization, and the removal of the worker cap for mipymes, mechanisms that economists and independent analysts describe as characteristic of market economies.
Marrero asserted that the transformations "perfect and strengthen our socialism" and that it is "a completely sovereign decision" that does not respond to external pressures.
Díaz-Canel, for his part, framed the urgency of the reforms within what the regime refers to as a "multidimensional war" against Cuba: "economic, ideological, cultural, and communicational," attributing the main obstacles to development to the U.S. embargo and Washington's "coercive measures."
The Minister of Justice was even more emphatic about the nature of the process: "This process is irreversible. The transformations have begun, they have the highest political approval, and there is no turning back; no one is authorized to do anything that goes against them."
Official optimism clashes with an economic reality that the regime itself cannot fully conceal. The CEPAL projects a 10.3% decline in Cuba's GDP in 2026, the worst in Latin America, while year-on-year inflation reached 25.19% in August, with food prices rising by 36.01%.
The minimum wage is equivalent to less than five dollars in the unofficial exchange rate, and Cuba experienced eight nationwide blackouts throughout the year. Economist Elías Amor described the reform package, just one day before the podcast was released, as “a complete deception”.
The regime itself acknowledged in internal opinion studies that part of the population perceives that the benefits of the transformations only reach those who have money, and that the exacerbation of inequalities generates rejection.
Marrero promised that by 2027 the results will be tangible: "Next year we will start with a level of progress and results that our people will truly be able to appreciate."
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