Cuba’s economy + Covid
HAVANA – Cubans use harsh words we’d rather not publish when standing in the now not so unusual long lines. When it comes to the economy they think of the dinner table and their pockets while in those queues, also what they need to purchase that cannot be found, and in the high price of products and the low salaries that can’t stand up to the costs of things… that’s what the current situation looks like. They wonder when the economy will rebound, or its consequences on the country, and how things are being handled. Because the fact is that the problem has existed for years and the lack of initiative is partly to blame.
Economists who hold important government jobs have stated that the problem is “structural”; that the country has been dragging this problem for some time. That it is structural coincides with what numerous experts have stated. And yet for some unexplained reason we “jumped off the train” of the planned integral transformations or the reformation of the economy. And as we stood around… the pandemic arrived at the metaphorical train stop. At present, Covid-19 demands of our economy the little it has and even more that it doesn’t.
The spread of Covid-19 is in all the provinces and in the cities. News releases of the past few days inform us that the number of deceased unfortunately grows in relationship with the rise in numbers of confirmed cases. New cases (and those hospitalized) are on the increase.
Daily reports should move each and every one of us toward a higher perception of risk. They should also deepen the government institutions’ commitment to fight the pandemic: conscientious screening, PCR processing, the agile transportation of positive cases and suspected cases to hospitals and residences authorized for the latter, control over possible contacts with positive cases, etc. Everything must be revitalized and the so-called officials directing this, which exist, must take this more seriously. But everything has a monetary cost. And that cost erodes the national pocket, already with so many holes that there’s almost no pocket left.
The pandemic and the health system are putting stress on an economy already in intensive care. It requires comprehensive responses without delay. The train of life cannot wait any longer.
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[The following article appeared in Progreso Semanal on May 9, 2020.]
GET ON THIS TRAIN AND NEVER GET OFF
The headline responds to what was said by Raúl Castro Ruz, First Secretary of the PCC, during the meeting of the Political Bureau that preceded that of the Council of Ministers yesterday [May 8, 2020]. The full quote, taken from Granma, reads like this: “This is the main strategic problem we have to which we must dedicate all our efforts. We must continue working on these issues, get on this train and not get off any more.”
Apparently the essence of both meetings was centered on the analysis of how to confront the pandemic, the economic-financial situation facing the country in a world in economic crisis and with neighbors who are tightening the blockade. So it was obvious that the call to liberate the productive forces was present in the published report. “We would be responding to one of the fundamental issues that has been debated in these years, which is to definitively liberate the productive forces in the country, and that this liberation of the productive forces has an impact on the economic and social development of the nation,” said Castro. It deals with a call that over the years was written into the Guidelines, approved in two party Congresses (VI and VII) and enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic. But, as we mentioned in a previous brief article, “it did not come to life in LIFE.” And this one’s the one that counts.
Now COVID-19 blows its whistle and the train seems to be on its way out with the announcement that we’re “not getting off any more,” and with the provision to remove roadblocks, which we can assume when, according to Granma, Díaz- Canel indicated “to give a definitive answer to the lifting we made of the obstacles and, therefore, what we propose must be analyzed from the perspective of not having obstacles.” What “obstacles” and of what nature? The newspaper does not specify, it only cites the president.
The news is very important, not because it settles controversies among the press, which are healthy and necessary, but because it tends to reaffirm the need to carry out economic reforms — postponed for years — and gradually implementing them because, according to Raúl Castro, “This is the main issue facing the Party Congress. It is the task to take up now and that it is already part of the Congress. Therefore, we can say that, working in this way, are already in Congress.”
