14ymedio, Havana, 29 November 2023 — Businessman Boris Titov, president of the Russia-Cuba Business Council and interpreter of the Kremlin’s will for business with Havana, recommended on Tuesday to the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) to accelerate the “digitalization of relations” between private companies and the State. The adviser argued that, “according to various estimates,” between 50% and 70% of the Island’s private businesses operate “in the shadows,” cheating the authorities; hence, the creation of a “more manageable” tax service is indispensable.
As usual, Titov started from the Russian experience after the fall of the Soviet Union to illustrate the need for new rules in the Cuban economic game. “The path we propose is the gradual introduction of market relations. Allow private companies to freely set prices in national currency,” he summarized. According to the businessman, the result will be a temporary – and probably disproportionate – increase in prices, but, in the long run, the black market will be mortally wounded thanks to “legal” competition.
Titov invited the directors of the BCC and the Island’s tax institutions, who met with him for a “round table” to fully enter a phase of “market reform,” whose cornerstone is the development of private companies. In that project – one of the fundamental steps of its usual list of recommendations to Havana – the Island will have to count on the advice of Russia.
Titov invited the directors of the BCC and the Island’s tax institutions to fully enter a phase of “market reform”
It is the Russian “digital superservice,” which only an ally with the necessary technological development can provide, and the key to reform, said Titov. Moscow’s “expansion of activities” will prevent the process from excessively benefiting private companies and will operate in response to one of the Government’s top concerns: “maintaining state contr
