Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power opened its biannual session on Saturday and, despite the communist island’s faltering economy topping the agenda, no plans were unveiled for change.
Cuban President Raul Castro, 83, addressed the parliament, which discussed why one of the world’s last command economies has not grown faster, after six years of very tentative reforms.
“Our growth rate is not something we are pleased with, but it does not discourage us in the least,” the president said.
Castro urged Cuban workers, who earn the equivalent of US$20 a month, to work “hard and optimistically, to turn this around and guarantee growth rates that will make socialist development possible.”
Yet he failed to unveil new strategies at the day-long meeting of 612 legislators and other senior officials.
Havana has said it plans to end an unpopular dual currency system, but has not given a timeframe for doing so.
The dual currency system is blamed for aggravating social inequality, which also worries the government.
“We don’t want shock methods to be imposed, or for the [change] to be traumatic for people, which also adds to the degree of complication” of the change, said Marino Murillo, the government official in charge of the slow, limited reforms.
Many Cubans fret that they might lose saving in pesos if the traditional peso is eliminated in favor of the Cuban Convertible Peso, a second local currency equal to the US dollar — the regular Cuban peso trades at 26.5 per US$1 — and accepted where only hard currency is accepted. The government does not want to trigger a run on banks.
However, Castro stressed to the assembly members that “it is appropriate to underscore that [Cuban] bank deposits will be guaranteed” in hard currencies and local ones, while blaming US sanctions for the country’s economic hardship.
Yet however keen for growth, Cuba — the only communist-run one-party state in the Americas — has refused to adopt market economies like those of allies China or Vietnam as it fears such reforms would cause social strife.
Havana has pared state payrolls and allowed more Cubans to be self-employed, but the country produces little outside the mining sector.
One of the nation’s key exports are government health workers on state contracts. Havana depends massively on ally Venezuela for cut-rate oil and other cooperation. In a country with ample farmland relative to its population of 11 million, Cuba still imports most of its food.
Cuban Minister of Agriculture Gustavo Rodriguez told a farming committee that the industry is experiencing “problems in all spheres,” with the country to spend about US$2 billion in precious hard currency on imported food.
Cuba’s economy last year grew by 2.7 percent, below the official target of 3.6 percent.
Havana last month lowered its growth forecast from 2.2 percent to 1.4 percent, blaming “adverse” economic conditions, including fewer than expected funds sent to its citizens from their relatives overseas.
Cuban Minister of Economy Adel Yzquierdo said at a recent Council of Ministers meeting that growth was just 0.6 percent for the first half of the year.
While the government has legalized such activities as buying and selling cars and homes, few Cubans have the resources to make big purchases.
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