BCN-21, 22Cuban reforms stress free market, private property and investment

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Cuban reforms stress free market, private property and investment

HAVANA, July 15, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Socialist Cuba is planning a series of
potentially far-reaching changes, with a new constitution set to recognize
the free market and private property, while dividing political powers between
a president and a prime minister.

In a reform of the island nation’s 1976 constitution expected to be quickly
approved, the fundamental means of production will remain under central
control, but foreign investment will be recognized as an important spur to
development, according to details of the document published Saturday by the
official newspaper Granma.

But the Communist Party will remain “the superior leading force of society
and of the state.”

The proposed changes come as 58-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel, a former
provincial leader, is in only his third month as Cuban president, succeeding
two icons of Cuba’s revolutionary generation, Raul Castro and before him his
brother Fidel Castro.

The draft constitution says the Council of Ministers, effectively the
island’s government, “will be under the direction of a prime minister,”
returning to the pre-1976 system.

The report in Granma says nothing about how the post of prime minister will
function, or who would occupy it.

The document has already been approved by the Communist Party, and will be
submitted for consideration by the National Assembly, with a vote expected
next weekend. Final approval will come after the document is submitted to a
popular referendum.

– New private-sector controls –

Diaz-Canel will remain as president once the new constitution is approved.
Presidents will continue to serve five-year terms, with a two-term maximum.

Cuba will resume authorizing people to work in the private sector — such
authorizations had been virtually suspended — but they will be under greater
controls, mainly affecting restaurants, taxis, the construction sector and
room rentals.

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The island’s small but vital private sector now employs some 13 percent of
the Cuban workforce.

The new controls will require business owners to use a bank account to
register all operations, to pay taxes and to prove their supplies are legally
obtained.

Business licenses are limited to one per person, to avoid the accumulation
of personal wealth — all part of plans to “update” the island’s Soviet-
inspired economic model.

Raul Castro opened Cuba up to a small private sector, but he also made it
clear in 2016 that “the concentration of property will not be allowed.”

Cuba had hoped that a diplomatic opening to the US, agreed on with
President Barack Obama, would stimulate the island’s struggling economy.

But Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, reversed that detente, to the dismay
of many Cubans.

BSS/AFP/SR/1900 HRS