HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba published yesterday economic reform guidelines approved by the ruling Communist Party that include proposals for the sale of homes and cars and possible changes to make it easier for Cubans to travel abroad.
But while the guidelines, endorsed last month by a party congress, were long on promises, they were short on details about when the proposals might become reality or what restrictions would accompany them.
The 313 guidelines generally reaffirm economic and social reforms President Raul Castro says are crucial to reviving Cuba’s faltering Soviet-style economy and assuring the survival of socialism when the aging leaders, who have ruled the island since its 1959 revolution, are gone.
They encourage more private initiative and reducing the size and role of the state, but maintain central planning and forbid the accumulation of private property.
Cubans, who stood in line at news kiosks to buy the guideline pamphlets for 3 Cuban pesos (about 12 US cents), said they were anxious to see what their leaders had in store for them. But many were wondering how the reforms would be applied in practice.
“The reforms still are creating a lot of uncertainty in the population … because they bring many changes,” said radio station employee Olivia Breto, 23.
“I think it’s a favourable change because it has to do with an opening in the economy, an opening to a market that we don’t know at the moment,” she said.
Many of the reforms are already underway, but others had to be refined and approved at the April congress of Cuba’s only legal political party and now await new laws or decrees to be implemented.
Those already begun include the slashing of state workforces and payrolls, allowing more self employment, and the leasing of state lands to would-be farmers.
