06 January 2025
Addressing the closing session of Cuba’s National Assembly, President Díaz-Canel told delegates that Government’s efforts to implement its macro-economic reform strategy will continue “with the aim of changing, in the shortest possible time, the overwhelming situation we are experiencing.”
Observing that “the insufficient results achieved” in 2024 were “reason for the most profound and severe self-criticism,” he told legislators that such failures had to be taken in context. Repeating remarks made at an earlier plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (detailed below), he said that Government is now having to take vital decisions on a day-to-day basis as new circumstances arise.
The cost of the embargo aside, he told the 18 December meeting of National Assembly members, “there are the arduous daily exercises” to decide how to prioritise expenditure and overcome payment delays through established international financial mechanisms. There is tension in the management of each of the issues about which there were justifiable citizen complaints he said, including the delay or fragmentation of the standard family basket, the distribution of milk, bread, liquefied gas and medicines, and basic and essential products for daily life.
Despite this, he suggested that limited but positive signs were beginning to appear in relation to food production, power generation, and the country’s fiscal deficit.
Domestic food production, although not at the desired level or price, he stated, is expected to improve as the areas planted increase, municipal food production develops, and foreign currency allocation schemes are used to stimulate sustainable grain production. In addition, he said, national rice production strategies will be developed on a commercial basis involving Vietnamese companies and Chinese advice. Together, improved food production will enable the foreign currency saved to be used to import food and buy inputs that guarantee future levels of production.
Turning to the island’s failing national electrical energy system, Díaz-Canel told legislators that although the results may not be immediate, the investment that is being made in renewable energy will help to create new generating capacity and more optimal use of fuels. Confirming that work is underway on two 1,000 MW projects with 100 MW of storage each, he said that action is also being taken to recover power in distributed generation and thermoelectric plants. He noted also that a foreign currency financing scheme has been approved to support the national oil industry to increase oil and gas production.
Highlights in this issue:
- Communist Party and National Assembly meetings set scene for a difficult 2025
- Marrero outlines challenging 2025 reform agenda
- Economy Minister stresses importance of correct sequencing of reforms
- Communist Party hears frank assessment – agrees overriding political objectives for 2025
- Less bureaucratic approach to foreign investment planned
Another positive sign, he suggested, relates to progress with the government’s plans to reduce the fiscal deficit. It is estimated, he said, that 2024 will close with a 46% reduction in the budget deficit, bringing the overall 2024 deficit to CUP90bn,” a figure “much lower than the CUP147bn planned.” This will enable, he said, the government “to work in 2025 with a deficit of CUP88bn.” Cuba’s President noted that the current account outcome for 2024 was “the best of the last five years and the projection for the year 2025 is the best of the decade.”
The progress being made, Díaz-Canel suggested, will make it easier to work in 2025 and deliver capital expenditure on priority investments including the national electric energy system, the water supply, food production, and science and innovation.
To ensure this happens, he stressed, compliance and social responsibility will be required of all economic actors along with comprehensive fiscal inspection, and the consolidation of banking reforms.
All of which he said will require all public servants to improve their communications to explain the origin, motivation and objectives of each decision or regulation.
In his closing address Díaz-Canel told legislators that while his greatest dream is that one day he will be able to tell them that Cuba had overcome the US embargo and Washington’s designation as a sponsor of terrorism, neither development was likely in the near future.
“The truth is the reverse of that dream: the blockade, its knots and the spurious list have no expiration date. It is the style of empires: to impose punishments and extend them over time,” he told legislators before going on to set out the economic challenges facing the country in the context of the need for a new international order. “No country,” he said, “can live and develop outside the prevailing economic order, especially if it tries to do so with the noose of a genocidal blockade.”
Describing the Cuban people as heroic, free, and sovereign, he concluded that Cuba would continue to weather “storms under fire without giving up” because “we are still better than our enemy.”
06 January 2025, Issue 1261
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