14ymedio, Havana, 14 March 2024 — The balance sheet for Internal Trade in Cuba for 2023, published by the Government this Wednesday, provided only one statistic for the sector: 70% of the construction materials delivery plan was met. The rest of the meeting consisted of an accumulation of “enigmatic formulations, abundant exhortations, a drought of data and scarcity of details about specific programs,” said Cuban economist Pedro Monreal.
The administrative inefficiency of the Ministry of Internal Trade barely motivated a discussion among officials, who mentioned in passing the main problems of the sector: “the proliferation of illegal sellers; the diversion from retail sales as a secondary activity in production companies; the scarce and unstable supply of products and services in gastronomy; the fluctuation and deficient preparation of managers and employees; as well as the ineffectiveness of the measures implemented to prevent and confront crime, illegalities and acts of corruption.”
According to the website of the Cuban Presidency, which summarized the meeting, “the main results achieved in 2023, as well as problems that persist in the sector and proposals to solve them” were exposed in an “audiovisual” that was not made public. “It would be advisable to disclose it because there is a striking ’statistical blackout’ with respect to Internal Trade, due to the absence of the 2022 data,” Monreal commented, while showing the empty printout for that year from the National Office of Statistics and Information (Onei).
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