Cuba is promoting a gradual redistribution of powers and resources so that municipalities can assume a more active role in production, investment, and the management of their own resources, without abandoning national planning or state control over strategic sectors.
Cuba is betting on strengthening municipal autonomy as part of its strategy to revitalize the economy, increase production, and improve the population’s quality of life. The objective is for local territories to stop functioning solely as implementers of decisions made by the central government and instead acquire greater capacity to identify their needs, manage resources, and promote local development initiatives.
The process seeks to decentralize responsibilities in areas such as strategic planning, land-use management, food sovereignty, municipal services, and the promotion of the local economy. It also expands municipal authority to generate and retain revenue, manage investments, and increase the participation of different economic actors in the development of each municipality.
RELATED: Cuba to Strengthen State-Owned Enterprises: Greater Autonomy to Boost Production and Development
This is the fifth pillar of the economic and social reform program launched by the Cuban government in June of this year. The program includes 176 measures aimed at confronting the economic crisis and stimulating productive activity. But what does this decentralization measure mean, and how will it be implemented? What is its historical background? How does decentralized government operate at the local level? And an even more important question arises: What does it mean for the Cuban people, and what consequences will it have for them?
More Responsibilities, Greater Decision-Making Capacity
Cuba faces a challenge that goes beyond transferring administrative responsibilities. Autonomy requires financial and material resources, trained personnel, clear rules, and coordination mechanisms that can turn decisions made at the territorial level into concrete results.
Decentralization involves a gradual redistribution of powers and resources from national institutions to local governments. According to Cuban regulations, this process must include the workers, organizational structures, and financial and material resources associated with the activities and services being transferred, in order to guarantee their continuity and efficiency.
Among the new capacities envisioned are budget management; approval of certain investments in accordance with territorial development strategies; promotion of foreign investment; and the ability to conduct import and export operations, as well as generate and retain foreign currency for necessary local expenditures.
The reform also seeks to diversify the local productive structure through the participation of state-owned enterprises, private small and medium-sized enterprises (Mipymes), self-employed workers, and other economic actors. Within this framework, municipal governments are being granted greater authority to approve the establishment and operation of certain private businesses.
“The purpose is to make use of the existing capacities in each territory, stimulate the production of goods and services, and generate new sources of employment,” explained Ivon Rodriguez, legal director of the Ministry of Economy and Planning, on the Cuadrando la Caja broadcast. The objective, she clarified, is to move toward greater integration among economic actors rather than treating them as isolated participants.
In other words, the broader a municipality’s business sector becomes, the greater its potential capacity to produce goods and services and generate employment, contributing to more balanced and sustainable territorial development.
Ver esta publicación en Instagram
Una publicación compartida de teleSUR English (@telesurenglish)
The Territorial Economy: Opportunities and Challenges
Decentralization also seeks to strengthen what is known as the mesoeconomy: the intermediate level between major macroeconomic decisions and the activities of individual businesses, where the particular characteristics of each territory become critically important.
In exclusive statements to teleSUR, researcher and economist Rafael Montejo warned that municipalities face unequal conditions when it comes to attracting investment and taking advantage of its benefits.
“The issue – he explained – is not simply attracting capital, but determining what makes each territory attractive and how the resources generated can benefit its population. It is also necessary to prevent locally generated wealth from leaving the municipality without making a sufficient contribution to its development.”
Montejo believes that, during the transition, academic institutions and research centers can play a fundamental role in supporting local governments. Some municipalities will need technical assistance, appropriate regulations, concrete initiatives, and financing mechanisms to make effective use of their newly acquired powers.
This warning points to one of the reform’s main risks: the transfer of responsibilities could advance faster than municipalities’ ability to exercise them. For this reason, decentralization requires regulations that clearly define the powers of each level of government, oversight and cooperation mechanisms, and tools that allow policies to be adapted to the economic and social characteristics of each locality.
RELATED: State and Private Sectors: An Alliance to Boost the Cuban Economy
Autonomy Without Fragmentation
The Cuban government has emphasized one central idea: greater municipal autonomy does not mean that each territory should operate in isolation, nor does it mean that the state will abandon its responsibility for distributing resources.
Ayuban Gutierrez Quintanilla, first vice president of the National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba (ANEC), told teleSUR that municipalities are expected to become more productive, service-oriented entities with greater capacity to respond to the needs of their residents.
Nevertheless, he warned that autonomy should not be confused with autarky (a condition of economic or political self-sufficiency and independence).
“Local governments need to maintain coordination with the rest of the country and have mechanisms that make it possible to address economic costs and social risks, especially since they are the institutions closest to the everyday realities of the population,” he explained.
Along these lines, the central government would retain a redistributive role: “Territories with surpluses would help support those experiencing deficits. The intention is to reduce inequalities among municipalities and prevent differences in resources and capacities from translating into even greater disparities in access to services and opportunities,” he added.
The reform also includes changes to the territorial organization of certain agricultural activities. Food sovereignty occupies a central place in this process, since organizing production, managing resources, and responding to supply needs can help reduce vulnerabilities and make better use of each territory’s potential.
Ver esta publicación en Instagram
Una publicación compartida de teleSUR English (@telesurenglish)
A Reform Facing Internal and External Obstacles
Cuba’s decentralization process is unfolding in an economic context marked by the difficulties caused by the U.S. blockade, which for decades has restricted the country’s access to financing, markets, technology, and essential supplies.
Unlike other decentralization processes in Latin America, which at different times have been associated with structural reforms and neoliberal policies, the Cuban approach is presented as a way to strengthen public institutions and improve economic efficiency without abandoning the socialist project, amid an intensification of the U.S. economic blockade.
The strategy is to bring decision-making closer to communities, facilitate citizen participation, and promote solutions tailored to local needs, while maintaining national coordination and public responsibility for strategic sectors.
For Luis Rene Fernandez Tabio, a doctor of economic sciences, the results of these transformations will neither be immediate nor uniform. “Will it be quick? No. Will it be magical? No. Will it be uniform or benefit everyone at the same time? Absolutely not,” the specialist emphasized in exclusive statements to teleSUR.
Nevertheless, in general terms, “what these experiences demonstrate to us, adapted to our own conditions, is that there will be improvements. And this is necessary, because without agricultural production and without investment in industry, the energy and sugar sectors, and agriculture in general, there can be no increase in production,” he explained.
The success of the reform will therefore depend not only on how many powers are transferred, but also on the ability to exercise them efficiently, equitably, and sustainably.
Amid externally imposed restrictions, long hours of power outages, resource shortages, limited fuel availability, and an unprecedented naval blockade in the past decade, Cuba continues moving forward. The path toward sustainable development also lies in the hands of local governance.
From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.