The shakeup began and will grow

By José Alejandro Rodríguez

HAVANA – The year just ended showed that a real shakeup is going on in Cuba, what the authorities are calling the actualization of the economic model. One doesn’t have to be a supporter of the Cuban government or embrace the ideology of socialism to verify that.

The vice president of the Council of Ministers himself, Mariano Murillo, the man responsible for the application of the changes, while evaluating the process of implementation of the Economic and Social Guidelines of the Sixth Party Congress after a national debate, told the latest session of the Cuban Parliament in 2011 that the actions taken so far are only the first steps and predicted that the stages of greater complexity and exigency are still ahead.

In good Cuban parlance, “the fat,” “the chicken in the chicken-with-rice” will become evident this year.

Though seemingly slow to the more impatient observers and hasty to the exegetical bureaucrats stuck in orthodox immobility, the reforms in Cuba’s economy advanced substantially in 2011. They struck the first blows against the longstanding hegemonic state ownership, expanding spaces for private labor and making life easier for entrepreneurs by giving them favorable treatment.

The government eliminated prohibitions and rigid rules that were obsolete and created financial and banking mechanisms that will benefit the various forms of economic endeavors and the citizens themselves.

It was a boom year for self-employment. In October 2010, an expansion of self-employment was approved in the nation’s economic and labor fields; by the end of 2011, the number of people who worked on their own had doubled, to more than 350,000.

The entrepreneurs’ weight in monetary circulation and economic operations is such that this year they will contribute more than one billion pesos in taxes to the national budget.
Among the measures that benefit non-state workers, contained in 33 resolutions by the Council of Ministers in 2011, are the elimination of the taxes due by employers who hire as many as five employees, the reduction of the monthly fees payable by people who rent homes and engage in other activities, and an increase in tax-free expenses, from 5,000 to 10,000 pesos, when calculating personal income tax.

The maximum number of seats allowed to the paladares, or private restaurants, was raised to 50 chairs, from 20.

Late in 2011, the experiment involving state-owned barber shops and hair salons was expanded; the workers became self-sufficient and leased the shops from the government. Beginning this year, permission to lease will be extended to many other services in six provinces; later, it will be extended nationwide.

The government’s penchant for overseeing every little store and street vendor without the ability to control them – a practice called chinchalismo, or flea-market mentality – is disappearing, giving way to personal initiative and a sense of belonging in the market.

Although it was decided that, beginning in 2012, there would be a 20 percent reduction in retail prices (in convertible pesos) for products sold in large quantities – a move that benefits non-state workers – the problem of supplies is a hindrance that is reflected in the prices to the population, because, according to the government, the financial conditions are not quite right to create a wholesale market that would charge lower prices for those products and materials.

Other signs of liberalization:

• the availability of bank credits for self-employed workers, farmers and citizens who build or repair their own homes, the latter an unsustainable burden on the state;
• the elimination of a ceiling on payment for services that state institutions get from private workers;
• the unencumbered sale and purchase of automotive vehicles and homes, and
• the possibility that farm producers, be they state-managed or cooperatives, may sell their products and harvests directly to tourism facilities.

Cuban agriculture, an essential element of the transformations, is considering even greater changes than those accomplished so far so it may reach efficacy and self-sustainability. Although the state continues to lease land in usufruct to individual farmers, much of that land remains idle and bureaucracy’s bad habits hinder progress in that sector.

To that end, new steps are being considered that might benefit producers, be they cooperatives or state-managed entities, by reducing middle-men and monopolies. There is talk of expanding the years for usufruct and bringing the producer’s habitat closer to the lands he tills.

The year just ended made clear to us that economic changes are not ruled by immovable criteria; instead, their application leads – in a flexible manner – to the making of timely decisions to correct mistakes and deviations.

Homework due

The list of unfinished business left by 2011 to 2012 and subsequent years is voluminous in terms of “economic actualization.”

The Cuban Parliament, in its final session, and the President’s message to the nation during his closing speech stressed the weaknesses in economic control, the insufficient and vulnerable contractual base of the nation, the chain of nonpayment between businesses, and other factors that fuel economic crime and corruption, either white-collar theft or blue-collar pilferage, which Raúl called the counter-revolution of these days.

These dangerous shoals demand a continuation – gradual but systemic and unceasing – of the changes. Especially in the essential nerve (almost untouched) of Cuba’s economy, its vital cell, around which everything must turn: the socialist state’s enterprise.

The socialist state’s businesses must make a total turnaround, leave behind the failures of so many years and develop an autonomy, a self-sufficiency, a decentralization and decision-making in the market, with schemes of expanded reproduction that can attract its principal actors, the workers’ collectives, who must bring together their own interests and those of their company and the nation.

The workers must look after their pockets, their welfare and capacity of decision, as well as the health of the factory, the progress of the nation and the probity of a socialism that is being renewed and becoming fuller, more participatory and democratic, throwing away its old, rusted tools.

That’s where the coming changes must lead us, so long as there are sharp eyes to integrate and make compatible the transformations. Above all, to correct in time, with the concurrence of all, what life shows us to be wrong.

As we cross this 21st-century Rubicon, much more difficult than the one that defied Caesar, let us say: Alea jacta est.

In a world with so much turbulence and inequity, harassed by the murderous obsession of the most powerful country, Cuba raises its sword to clear its own brush and preserve its dream of social justice with her feet and hands well planted on the soil.

 

Progreso Semanal/ Weekly authorizes the total or partial reproduction of the articles written by our journalists so long as the source and author are identified.