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The
reforms include allowing private businesses to employ more than
100 workers, participate in financial and currency markets,
import and export goods without state intermediaries, hire
workers directly and gain access to more idle land.
Although Díaz-Canel and Marrero reiterated that the Cuban
government does not intend to embrace capitalism, the package
moves Cuba toward the kind of economic opening the United States
has demanded for decades — even as Washington maintains
sanctions that Havana describes as an energy blockade.
“We are not going to stop,” Díaz-Canel said, rejecting
assertions by U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of
State Marco Rubio that Cuba is a “failed state.”
At the same time, he rejected the latest U.S. sanctions, which
this week revoked the permission previously granted by former
U.S. President Joe Biden for small Cuban private entrepreneurs
to open accounts in U.S. banks.
No figures are available on how many Cuban entrepreneurs hold
such accounts, but independent analysts on the island described
the move as a setback for the development of private enterprise.
“Now they are attacking that sector as well, making it
increasingly clear that there is no interest or willingness to
benefit our people — that it is all a lie, all a fallacy,”
Díaz-Canel added.
U.S. sanctions have deepened the economic crisis gripping the
island for five years. Cubans have endured blackouts lasting
more than 30 hours, transportation disruptions, flight
cancellations and a sharp decline in production.
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