The Cuban government has approved a new amendment to the administrative decentralization process that, despite its stated objective of strengthening the autonomy of municipalities, keeps 12 strategic sectors outside of territorial competences, including telecommunications, water, national infrastructure, and economic and financial policies.
The measure, outlined in the , published this Saturday in the Official Gazette, also reserves the Council of Ministers the authority to extend the list of excluded activities.
The regulation, signed by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz on August 20, 2026, at the Palace of the Revolution, was published this Saturday in the , pages two to four, and takes effect immediately.
The decree amends Articles 9 and 14 of Decree 140, approved in November 2025 as the general framework for the decentralization process.
The amended Article 9 establishes a list of 12 excluded sectors from the decentralization process: national defense and security; foreign relations; monetary, exchange rate, financial, tax, and banking policy; public infrastructure of national scope and interest; aviation and merchant marine; telecommunications and radio spectrum; water; non-renewable natural resources; hydrocarbon refining; biodiversity; genetic heritage; and others determined by the Council of Ministers itself.
Article 14, as amended, distributes specific responsibilities among the agencies of the Central State Administration.
Thus, strategic planning is the responsibility of the Ministry of Economy and Planning; food sovereignty falls under the Ministry of Agriculture; communal services are handled by the Ministry of Industries; local budget and tax management is overseen by the Ministry of Finance and Prices; environmental management is managed by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and the Environment; and training is the responsibility of the Ministry of Higher Education, among others.
Each head of agency must present to the president of the Temporary National Decentralization Commission a specific timeline of actions, methodological guidelines, and a training program for the structures of Local Administrations of Popular Power.
The text of the decree itself justifies the changes by stating that "the approved Economic and Social Transformations represent a boost and a higher stage in the process of decentralizing powers and transferring resources to the territories, which, given the current conditions and in order to guarantee the quality of this process, makes it necessary to establish organizational guidelines that lead to the strengthening of the municipality."
The Decree 173 is part of the package of 176 economic and social transformations that the Cuban government presented in June 2026, organized into 23 axes, among which was the expansion of municipal autonomy.
According to information provided by the government in September 2026, 155 of those 176 transformations already had approved regulations at that time.
The heads of the agencies of the Central State Administration have a period of up to 30 business days from the publication of the decree to adopt the necessary regulatory provisions for its implementation.
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