22 June 2026
Cuba’s Communist Party and National Assembly has approved over 170 potentially far-reaching market-related economic reforms. The measures are intended in part to stimulate economic development and investment in both state and non-state enterprises.
Confirming the changes, Cuba’s leadership reaffirmed the leading role of Cuba’s Communist Party (PCC), suggesting that belatedly the country may be trying to develop an updated socialist economic and political model closer to that of present-day Vietnam.
If well implemented the reform package formally approved on 18 June by the Cuban Parliament represents a significant attempt at structural change.
Much of what has been agreed has been previously announced on a piecemeal basis by the Cuban leadership and reported on by Cuba Briefing. However, taken together as an integrated package the measures represent a long overdue attempt to stimulate a more market-oriented economy that might gradually restore economic growth.
The changes announced suggest a significant change in thinking. They include elements such as the authorisation of direct foreign investment in private companies and cooperatives; the establishment of private banking; new openings and incentives for foreign investment in tourism and previously closed areas of the economy; and the ability of investors to directly hire Cuban workers.
President Díaz-Canel and other senior figures in the PCC have rejected any suggestion that the reforms respond to external pressure, instead making clear that the country’s socialist system will remain in place, albeit in an administratively revised form.
Despite this, the timing of the long overdue changes appears to have come about in part because of the severe economic pressure being exerted by the US and the increasingly uncertain and severe cumulative effect that both sanctions and Cuban economic mismanagement are now having on Cuban social stability and national coherence.
The changed approach may also reflect the fact that the most conservative part of the Cuban Communist Party and the broader leadership has accepted that to survive, the time has come to accept what the country’s liberal economists within the state system – and those previously sidelined – have been saying for several years about the need for rapid market-oriented reform.
For their part, many ordinary Cubans believe that the unusually swift political and legislative process bringing into being the reforms reflects the need to respond rapidly deteriorating social situation across the country. This has worsened significantly since the US imposed an oil embargo in January this year, and strengthened sanctions on GAESA, the military conglomerate that controls much of the Cuban economy.
The announcements of the new measures followed an unpublicised politburo meeting that led to a weeklong series of formal meetings involving an extraordinary session of the Central Committee of the PCC on 12 June, the calling of an extraordinary session of the National Assembly by the Council of State, and a formal sign-off by legislators on 18 June.
Photo credit: @AsambleaNacionalCuba https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfNwE3eketjLnKvxwEgpHiw
22 June 2026, Issue 1319
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