Castro merges 2 ministries, reduces 3 to end ‘unnecessary expenses’
By Gerardo Arreola
From the Mexican newspaper La Jornada
HAVANA – President Raúl Castro confirmed his intention to slim down the government body by ordering the merger of two ministries and the reduction of three others in the quest for “efficient functioning, greater rationality and a reduction of unnecessary expenditures.”
The Council of Ministers approved the creation of a Ministry of Industries that will absorb the ministries of the Steel Industry and Light Industry. The new portfolio also will manage the sector of chemistry, formerly under the Ministry of Basic Industries, which now becomes the Ministry of Energy and Mining, with authority over oil, electric power and mining.
According to an official announcement, the sizes of the ministries of Finance and Prices and Labor and Social Security will be reduced, as well as the sizes of the institutes of Physical Planning and Housing.
In addition to solving operational difficulties in each sector, the reductions “will help to proceed with the separation of the state and entrepreneurial functions,” the report said, alluding to one of the key accords reached by the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party in April 2011.
According to the agreement, the companies will stop reporting to the ministries and will become part of the sector holdings. They will be ruled by the criteria of profitability.
This is the second time that Cuba attempts to reduce its bureaucratic apparatus. In 1994, the economic crisis forced the authorities to dismantle the old, Soviet-style structure, which had multiple departments and collective leaders. The institutions were created in part to serve as interlocutors with their counterparts in Eastern Europe.
With that adjustment, Cuba formed a government in the Western manner, but the dismantling was limited.
In February 2008, Raúl Castro announced a new reduction in public administration. The 28 ministries that existed in 1994 were pared down to 22; today, they are 20. The Central Bank and the institutes of Aeronautics, Sports and Radio/Television are sector administrations with the rank of ministries. In 2009, Castro created the office of the Comptroller General of the Republic, with authority over the government itself.
Like the rest of the economic reform under way in Cuba, the plan to streamline the government emerged from the Permanent Commission on Implementation and Development, a special team assigned to enforce the accords reached during the Communist Party Congress. The commission is led full-time by Vice President Marino Murillo.
The report on the session of the Council of Ministries made no reference to the plan for massive firings that was announced in 2010 but was later slowed down.
