{"id":234419,"date":"2021-02-10T09:38:10","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T14:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=234419"},"modified":"2021-02-10T09:38:10","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T14:38:10","slug":"closer-to-the-horizon-cuban-private-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/counterbalance\/closer-to-the-horizon-cuban-private-sector\/","title":{"rendered":"Closer to the horizon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although it seemed that the list of activities not allowed as a modality of self-employment in Cuba looked faraway like the horizon, today we can practically reach it with our fingertips. In short, when the regulations in this regard are published, it will be known how much the Cuban business fabric can be diversified and effectively enriched under current conditions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The history of self-employment has been with us since the late 1970s, when the first resolution that allowed such activity was issued as part of the \u201crectification of errors\u201d announced in the Programmatic Platform of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). This document was the foundation that anticipated the first of all the PCC congresses.<\/span><\/p>\n

This story has been told over and over again for decades, especially since the 1990s, from multiple perspectives,<\/span>1<\/b> with greater or lesser depth, from quite different and sometimes irreconcilable political and ideological positions: from the almost absolute naivety of understanding the event as \u201cthe solution\u201d to the country\u2019s problems to the one that has identified it as part of the problems and dangers, and even as the confirmation of the distancing of official policy from the essential foundations of the Revolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. administrations, especially since Clinton, have had self-employment as the resource to subvert and undermine Cuban socialism from within and overthrow the \u201cCastro dictatorship.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Because it is an economic issue, it has always been a sensitive political issue as well. Hence the complexity of its treatment and the ups and downs that have defined its most recent history.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inserting it into the Cuban economic, social and political model, as well as demonstrating its need and legitimacy, has been the task of Political Economy and other areas of Social and Political Sciences on multiple occasions. An attempt has also been made to explain its incompatibility and its antagonistic character with the purposes of Cuban socialism in the same number of articles and speeches.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2013 Ra\u00fal Castro publicly defended the need to change the \u201cpolitical vision\u201d that existed regarding self-employment and <\/span>called<\/span><\/a> for the elimination of prejudices towards this modality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Self-employment was, like Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), accepted in the 1990s as a \u201cnecessary evil\u201d and recently recognized as an indispensable part of Cuba\u2019s growth and development needs. Expanding it now in the <\/span>announced<\/span><\/a> magnitude definitely confirms that, if you want to move towards the future, self-employment must be considered as an essential part of the strategy, as an actor, agent and form of ownership that is more than a \u201ctraveling companion\u201d and that will be with us for many years. One would then have to ask if, like FDI, self-employment is \u201cstrategic\u201d in our aspirations for economic development.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is also true that in the last three years, encouraged\u2014at least in part\u2014by what appears in the official documents that guide the economic reform in Cuba, and in a good part by what the reality of our economy itself confirmed, papers were published with concrete proposals on how to incorporate the sector into the development strategy. Some of these works were pointed out by economist Pedro Monreal in a <\/span>recent<\/span><\/a> comment on the flexibility of self-employment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cuba eliminates list of activities allowed in the private sector<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n