Cuba’s Economic Czar Says Forget Political Reforms

By Circles Robinson

HAVANA TIMES, March 27 — Marino Murillo, a vice president of Cuba’s Council of Ministers and charged with overseeing the implementation of President Raul Castro’s economic reforms, told the local and foreign press on Monday not to expect any political reforms from the government.

In explaining that the only change underway in Cuba is an updating of the existing system, Murillo said that Cuba’s economy had resembled the Soviet one and that its specialists have been studying China, Vietnam, Russia and other Euorpean countries.

“We’ve done that in the spirit of understanding the methods used and the economic concepts they have applied, noted Murillo.

He went on to add: “This doesn’t mean we are going to automatically copy what others have done.  It’s always valid to learn from other countries; the error would be to automatically copy them. We learn from those experiences, but in Cuba there will be no political reform.”

To clarify that statement, he noted: “In Cuba what we have is an updating of the Cuban economic model, to make our socialist model sustainable, and that has to do with the wellbeing of our people.”

“What we are doing is updating our economic model, we are not making political reforms,” he emphasized.

Murillo further noted that the government is working on putting in force a new tax law and seeks greater efficiency in its primarily state-run economy.