Cuba to Face New Belt Tightening…
during the rest of 2016, says Economy Minister Marino Murillo
HAVANA TIMES – The Cuban government announced today that it “will face restrictions in the economy” during the remainder of 2016 due to the fall in international oil prices and nickel, reported dpa news.
Cuba received 90,000 barrels of oil daily from Venezuela at attractive prices in exchange for Cuban doctors providing services. A portion of the Venezuelan fuel is resold by Havana to third countries for hard currency.
The Cuban economy has been affected also by lower than expected sugar production, said Economy Minister Marino Murillo, during a plenary session of the national parliament.
Murillo told legislators that despite the lack of liquidity of the Cuban economy the government “will maintain vital services to the population”, informed the official newspaper “Granma”.
The Cuban government also announced problems in energy production, but gave no specifics, and said the situation “requires strict savings and efficient use of energy and fuels.”
“The measures to address the current situation will avoid blackouts and delivery of basic services to the population,” said Murillo.
In recent weeks, workers in state companies were warned of power restrictions in their workplaces of up to 50 percent, but Cuban authorities have not issued an official statement.
Minister Murillo confirmed the measure is geared to savings so that the population is not directly affected by power outages, which would be a traumatic reminder of the blackouts during the nineties after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
During the last parliamentary meeting in December 2015, the Cuban government foresaw a growth of the Cuban economy this year of two percent, marked by a falling price of raw materials exported by the island, such as nickel and sugar.
The Cuban deputies are meeting this week in commissions to analyze aspects of the documents approved by the VII Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba held last April.
Among the topics under discussion are the situation of housing, passenger transport services, energy production and tax revenues.
It’s just a parrot trotting out the same old sock phrases. Either through laziness or inability – perhaps both, CErmle just doesn’t read thoroughly the contributions of others. It is so obvious that he has no real knowledge of Cuba that he is in consequence unable to make any form of useful contribution to discussion.
If by “The People’s” you mean “The Castros and their cronies” then the answer for me would be yes. To be exact, destroy is the wrong word. It is clear that the revolution is dead. The correct word to use in this case is “remove”
Once again, are you or are you not a counter-revolutionary bent on destroying The People’s Revolution?
For your amusement Bluewatersailor, earlier this year GAESA made a new attempt to resolve the perpetual shortages of toilet paper in Cuba (usually resolved by appropriate use of ‘Granma’). They did so by importing perilously narrow toilet paper from Vietnam which reflected the highest level of communist humour, being named ‘Saigon”.
The situation in Venezuela is worse each day. It is unlikely that supply of crude to Cuba continues with no change. They need to replace about $8 billion in annual support from Venezuela.
This
statement does not jive with all the images coming out of Cuba. No country in our hemisphere has received more government officials, dignitaries
and members of the business community interested in working in Cuba in the past two years than all other countries in the region.
Most have expressed a burning desire to invest and participate in Cuba’s development. Many have condoned part of Cuba’s outstanding debt and most have complained about a cumbersome, slow, secretive process with no accountability, which has not allowed the huge interest that many has expressed to move forward.
The Mariel Special Zone is visited every week by delegations from around the world and the highest ranking government officials from literally every country. Everyone has expressed interest in investing and yet, a cumbersome, secretive, impossible to understand bureaucracy have subject most potential partners to a grinding approval mechanism, which has allowed a cumbersome bureaucracy to approve only 8 foreign company to settle and begin construction on the Mariel Special Zone. Why?
Cuba is a jewel but it will soon lose its attraction, because of some unknown process that hinder the movements of its projects. If this passivity is expressed in what should be the development jewel in Cuba, imagine someone trying to develop any area in Guantanamo?
Explaining the world financial difficulties by Cuban government officials, difficulties which are not unique to Cuba, and to do the easy thing, which is to impose further limitation on the Cuban people is easy.
I certainly hope, that the highest level of government would take a hard look at its bureaucracy, the way they operate and ask themselves why, in literally everywhere else around the globe, an investor is required to present a list of requirements and in a reasonable time the process must be analyzed, approved, constructed and get started. Why is no one responsible of seeing this through in Cuba?
The Mariel Special Zone elicited enormous hope of development in and outside Cuba. If the approval process, construction and start up is not expedited, investors will end up setting up shop a less desirable places which offer more incentive and desire to work.
Introduce a Bonus Management System and we will see an immediate reversal in the crawling work procedure throughout the country. Every person in Cuba including its leaders at the highest level have heard the result of imposing quasi hunger wages. Everyone saw the enormous increase in productivity, when decades ago, many job were paid per task, until some extremist began worrying about how much employees were earning without revising how much productivity had increased.
Today a popular expression rings true: “They Pretend To Pay Me and I Pretend To Work”!
State run economies, like those in Cuba, simply do not work well at all. In fact they create great misery and want. Those of us who have been to Cuba, speak Spanish and have Cubano friends know this without a doubt.
Besides this, these systems commonly spur a police state with attempts to rigidly control individual expression. Look at Venezuela now. Chavez and Maduro have created a nightmare where folks don’t even have paper to wipe their rear-ends.
Those sympathetic to the delusional idealism of the far left should all have to go and live in such a system for three months. Believe me, those with any common sense left would get the cure, and pretty quickly.
Excuses, excuses, excuses are as usual the consequence of pursuit of socialismo policies.
No doubt the reduction in sugar production will be held to be a consequence of the embargo by the Castro regime sympathizers although the visits to sugar plants by Second Vice-President Ventura wearing his hard hat were explained onTV as encouraging production.
Marino Murilla is supposedly an economist by profession – and one who personally lives well if appearances are indicative, his daughter Glenda saw the light and lives in the US – no doubt Ronin would like to see her repatriated. One recalls with interest watching Murillo explaining the economic future of Cuba as recently as March, 2016 and that anticipated 2% increase in economic growth.
But as usual, things are in a mess and the people of Cuba will suffer the consequences of an incompetent communist regime.
The domino effect is in play. Cuba’s Venezuelan sugardaddy has fallen on hard times. It was only a matter of time before Cuba began to feel the consequences. One thing is for sure, the Castros always say things are better than they really are during the good times and never admit how bad things really are during the bad times.