Cuba publishes list of proposed economic changes

"Posted on Monday, 05.09.11

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Cuba economy

Cuba publishes list of proposed economic changes
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuba's ruling Communist Party finally published its pie-in-the-sky list
of proposed economic reforms on Monday, raising both high hopes for a
more efficient economy and deep questions about exactly how that would
be achieved.

The 313 "guidelines" proposed expanding the sale of homes and cars and
the ability of Cubans to travel abroad as tourists, creating production
cooperatives and slashing state subsidies and payrolls, among many other
changes.

Endorsed last month at a Communist Party Congress, the proposals are
designed to rescue a crisis-plagued economy by opening the doors to
private business activity without totally abandoning Cuba's half-century
of Soviet-styled central controls.

But the proposals published in the Granma newspaper, the official voice
of the party, provided few details on how those changes would be carried
out, leaving optimists and pessimists alike to read whatever they wanted
into the list.

Cars already can be bought and sold if they were manufactured before
1959 — the year that Fidel Castro's guerrillas seized power — and houses
can be legally exchanged in a complicated system of "permutas" or swaps.

Cubans already can travel abroad as tourists — as long as the government
grants them "white cards" — the coveted permissions to leave the
country, and return without being considered permanent émigrés who loses
all their properties on the island.

Dissident Havana economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe said he was still
analyzing the guidelines but considered it "very positive" that they
recognized the need for various forms of production, including
cooperatives and what Cuba calls "self-employment" — micro enterprises
such as family restaurants and party clowns.

But he added that guideline 265 — "to study a policy that would make it
easier for Cubans to travel abroad as tourists" — could easily create
chaos because "a lot of people would leave for good because of the
economic conditions that we face."

Though officially only "guidelines," their sensitivity is reflected in
their history.

Raúl Castro first proposed 291 items that closely matched his own
thinking on reforms late last year, then threw it open to a national
debate. By the time the Communist Party Congress opened April 16, more
than 40 items had been dropped, one-third had been reworded and the
total had grown to 311. And when the government announced Sunday that
they would be published on Monday, they had grown to 313.

They are expected to be put into effect by either government decrees or
laws approved by the National Assembly of People's Power, which usually
meets only for two brief sessions a year.

The latest list of 313 proposals was not available outside Cuba as of
late Monday, but news agency reports from Havana noted some of the
details mentioned or left out of the items.

The section on buying and selling home, for example, made no mention of
what kinds of taxes or fees will be charged on the transactions,
according to the Associated Press. Blogger Yoani Sanchez told
journalists that she was skeptical about item 265 because it made no
mention of lifting the need for the "white cards."

Many Cubans already now receive permission to travel abroad, for tourism
or family reunions, to any country that would issue them visas, though
the "white cards" are often denied to dissidents, physicians, minors and
members of the military.

One proposal on foreign investment described it as needed but noted that
it should bring with it advanced technologies and management methods as
well as new export markets in order to create skills and capital for new
jobs.

Mid-sized government enterprises could be spun off as cooperatives run
by their current employees, according to the news reports, and would be
allowed to sell their products on the open markets. But there was no
word on who would set the prices for the goods produced.

Some state-owned buildings could be turned into private residences to
ease Cuba's critical housing shortage, according to an Associated Press
report. The government also wants to eliminate the country's burdensome
two-currency system and legalize the sale of construction material at
unsubsidized prices.

Other guidelines calls for the continued shrinking of the ration card,
which provides all Cubans with a basic basket of food and personal items
per month at highly subsidized prices, and replacing it with a system of
subsidies for poor families only.

One big issue now is whether any reform enacted will have the desired
impact in a country where tight government controls mean that few things
can be done legally — but almost anything can be done illegally —
Espinosa Chepe told El Nuevo Herald.

Cubans have been illegally buying and selling cars and homes for
decades, often paying bribes to the very government officials who were
supposed to be blocking or catching and punishing such deals.

"Now comes the strong fight over these points," Chepe said, "truly the
most profound changes in 52 years but one could argue that not enough
for the level of crisis that we face in Cuba."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/09/v-fullstory/2209271/cuba-publishes-list-of-proposed.html