14ymedio, Madrid, 12 December 2023 — Fewer than ten days before the beginning of the next ordinary session of Cuba’s National Assembly – December 20 – where the green light will be given to the draft Law on the Socialist State Enterprise, the Cuban economist Pedro Monreal has given an advanced preview of the text, unknown until now, whose greatest novelty is the reorganization of the 2,009 existing entities under the control of a single structure.
The expert considers it “the most important modification in the country’s economic institutions since 1976,” although he admits that “it seems to be unjustifiably optimistic that the new framework could instill efficiency while maintaining a voluntaristic price formation mechanism.”
The new law structures the Cuban business system in a different way than has been done in the last 60 years, with the creation of the National Institute of State Business Assets, a kind of super-ministry, dependent on the Council of Ministers, which will exercise the functions of owner over all state companies, except for authorized exceptions. The change means that the current ministries and their leaders will stop “looking after them.”
The law structures the Cuban business system differently than it has been in the last 60 years, when the National Institute of State Business Assets was created.
“It is striking that the name of the new super ministry (National Institute of State-Owned Enterprise Assets) is similar to that of an important reform institution in China (State Commission for the Supervision and Administration of State Assets, Sasac)” Monreal reflects. “But there are notable differences between the two institutions,” he adds, the main one being that “Sasac works within the framework of an economy with a high degree of market mechanisms and private enterprise.”
Sasac was created in 2003 and is considered one of the key points in the process of change towards a market economy in China. In addition to entailing a change in management, its main function over the years has been to encourage foreign investment an