CUBA APPROVES LONG-SOUGHT LEGAL STATUS FOR PRIVATE BUSINESSES

Reuters, Jun 02, 2021  

Marc Frank

Original
Article

HAVANA —
Cuba has approved a reform that includes long-sought legal status for private
businesses that began operating decades ago under the title of “self-employed,”
state-run media reported on Wednesday.

Top officials have said for months they were planning changes to sort out rules for state-run companies and private cooperatives and businesses so they can function on an equal footing in the Communist-run country.

The Council of Ministers agreed the measure at its latest closed-door session, state-run media wrote, without detailing when it would become law.

The
reform would include legal status for the private sector’s thousands of
businesses from eateries and garages to construction and beauty salons and for
cooperatives.

“With
this decision we are approving how to organize the actors in our economy, which
goes much further than the simple recognition of some of them,” Communist Party
leader and President Miguel Diaz Canel was quoted as stating.

Unlike
Communist Party-ruled China and Vietnam, Cuba has been slow to implement market
reforms to its Soviet-style command economy. 
But the government has picked up the pace in the face of a severe
economic crisis and food, medicine and other shortages it blames largely on
U.S. sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic, while admitting failure to reform is
also at fault.

Still,
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz emphasized the state would remain the
dominant economic player, insisting “we are not privatizing the economy,”
according to the report.

Private
farmers and cooperatives have operated for decades in Cuba in agriculture. The
“self-employed” sector meanwhile – that includes businesses, their employees,
trades people and others such as taxi drivers – has expanded over the past
decade to include more than 600,000 workers. 
Thousands more work in non-agricultural cooperatives, a new category
allowed in 2012. Authorities had suspended issuing new licenses for such
cooperatives but under the new reform will start issuing them once more.  All in all, the private sector now makes up
around a third of the six million strong labor force.

Oniel
Diaz, co-founder of the private businesses consultancy AUGE, said approval
signaled a further expansion of the private sector was on its way, but it still
could take a while.  “The wait
continues,” he tweeted.

 (Reporting by Marc Frank; additional reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Nick Macfie)