Cuba’s Economy Cash Strapped
![Scene from Havana. Photo: Caridad](https://havanatimes.org/wp-content/gallery/havana-scenes/doors-1.jpg)
HAVANA TIMES, Jan. 12 — The lack of liquidity in hard currency is the principal economic problem in Cuba, affirmed the island’s Economy Minister Marino Murillo.
According to the official, the government’s strategy involves the substitution of imports and giving priority to sectors such as tourism, telecommunications and civil aeronautics, reported IPS.
Other factors that keep the Cuban economy far from its potential are low work productivity, workplace theft, and an aging population.
Affirming that things like “lack of liquidity in hard currency,” “low productivity” and “workplace theft” are the problem is like affirming that “lack of money and jobs” are the problem with being poor.
It’s like saying that “the principal economic problem in the state of poverty is the lack of cash.”
The Minister’s time could be better spent affirming the “root cause” of these “symptoms.”
The root cause is the bizarre, unworkable “principle” that the state, as one big corporation, should own the means of production and manage everyone in society.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that, if the PCC theorists will come to their senses and advance Cuba to a modern cooperative republic–in which workers and the state co-own industry and commerce thru cooperative corporate structures–the above “symptoms” can be eliminated in short order.
It’s becoming more and more apparent however that saying such things is like talking to a fence post.