Follow Cubanos por el Mundo and choose us as a preferred source.
Economist Elías Amor Bravo, a specialist in the Cuban economy and a professor at the University of Valencia, laid out in Madrid the economic core of the Cuba transition plan that Rosa María Payá presented on Nov. 3, a day before the 30th Ibero-American Summit. That section of the plan addresses legal certainty, private property and opportunities for entrepreneurs.
What he proposes for the peso, inflation and the state sector
Amor Bravo said the economy is possibly the worst legacy the communists will leave behind and that action will be needed on both the domestic and the external fronts. At home, he proposed restoring the value that, he said, the Cuban peso loses every day on informal markets, controlling inflation and the expansion of the state sector, and opening space for private activity and foreign investment, especially private investment. He warned that these are very risky measures that may require sacrifices from the population, but said those sacrifices will be rewarded, unlike now, when, in his words, Cubans “live permanently sacrificed.”
Where the money would come from, according to Amor Bravo
He argued that to attract foreign investment Cubans must put in their own money, because “nobody is going to come from outside to invest if there is no counterpart putting in theirs,” and that the money exists but is “badly placed.” According to his figures, which this outlet has not verified, the state accounts for 65% of gross domestic product, compared with an average of 25% in Latin America, so 40 points of GDP should move from state activity to the private economy.
Follow Cubanos por el Mundo and choose us as a preferred source.
A check by this outlet helps put those figures in context, though it does not confirm them. ECLAC put total central government spending in Latin America at 21.2% of GDP in 2019. The series from Cuba’s National Office of Statistics and Information compiled by Trading Economics shows 42.9% of GDP in 2024 and an average of 62.7% from 2004 to 2024. These are public spending figures from different years and with different coverage, and Amor Bravo did not explain in his remarks where his come from.
He added that, if that is achieved, Cuba could even recover its sugar cane industry. He called it “one of the great hopes” he holds that the country once again becomes a major sugar power and sells sugar to Brazil instead of buying it, as he said it does now.
Repealing the Communist Party’s economic policy
He closed by imagining the day Payá signs the repeal of the economic policy documents of the government and the Communist Party, among them the National Economic and Social Development Plan through 2030 and the program of 176 transformations. That day, he said, will be a happy one, but “it will not be the end”; it will be the beginning.
Read the full coverage of the presentation of the Cuba transition plan.
Amor Bravo spoke in Spanish; quotes were translated by Cubanos por el Mundo.
Follow Cubanos por el Mundo and choose us as a preferred source.
