RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to the Minister of Economy Alejandro Gil, the loss of tourism revenues will require savings that will also be felt by the population.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel named a number of reform proposals for the upcoming party conference, which are to be implemented more speedily.
Since the first cases on March 11th, Cuba has been successful in controlling the spread of the coronavirus. On Monday only 17 new infections were reported.
This brings the total number to 1,685 cases, 954 patients have recovered and 69 people have died. However, the economic consequences for the island, after the border closures, most recently extended until the end of May, and the collapse of the global economy, are not yet predictable.
“We are working to ensure that there are as few restrictions as possible on workers and the population, but there will be,” said Gil, referring to the adjustments in the economic plan for this year.
In addition to the slump in tourism, Cuba could also suffer from a decline in remittances from families abroad, which are one of the country’s three largest sources of income, behind only exports of medical services and tourism.
In the USA, the unemployment rate in April is estimated to have increased to as much as 20 percent.
In addition, the economic blockade has become more severe: even in the context of the pandemic, the US government has so far not been willing to relax the measures that have been in place for over 60 years and which have been toughened several times since then.
Only last October, US President Donald Trump further reduced the limits for remittances to Cuba. In March, a ship carrying pharmaceutical supplies to Cuba was forced to turn back after the US government threatened the company with punitive measures.
The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) projects a recession of 5.3 percent in the region in 2020.
According to the report, the economic consequences of the coronavirus crisis will impact Venezuela (-18 percent), St. Lucia (-8.1 percent), and Grenada (-7.3 percent) most severely, while Cuba is expected to experience an economic slump of 3.7 percent.
“An economy with zero tourism and under the tightened US blockade cannot continue to operate as if nothing were happening,” explained Gil at the meeting. “We must clearly lay out our arguments on the table, stand together and adjust to this reality”, the Minister said.
The current plan’s priorities would be shifted towards agriculture, boosting exports, and producing medicines and hygiene products. There will also be cuts in expenditure and imports, affecting both investment projects and consumption by the population.
“Faced with these consequences, we must save wherever we can,” Gil said. Díaz-Canel called for the new model of socialism adopted in 2016 to be implemented “faster, more decisively and in a more organized way”.
The crisis should be used to implement the economic reform concepts, he said. In doing so, “social justice, equality and opportunities for those on low incomes” should be preserved”. He had earlier suggested that state and private economic players be more closely integrated in order to “unleash the productive forces”.
State companies should “at last act as real companies”. “We must be bold and do things differently. By always doing the same thing, we will neither solve problems nor move forward,” Díaz-Canel said on Saturday.
Source: Amerika21