New Year Desires / Fernando Damaso

For the five-year period 2011-2016, the Cuban authorities planned for a 5.1% growth in the economy. It was later reduced to 4.4%. However the average growth has been 2.7%, with this year, 2014, being the worst with a growth of only 1.3%. This has displaced 2009, when growth was 1.4%, as the year with the worst numbers since the beginning of the so-called updating of the economic model.

We now have more than 20 years of sustained economic stagnation, which demonstrates that despite all the efforts undertaken so far to overcome it, the model does not work. It has brought a great deterioration in social services, which can clearly be felt among citizens, regardless of the official propaganda that tries to convince them of the contrary.

There has been a demonstrated inability to recover the industrial indices and agricultural production, and in addition all of the infrastructure has suffered considerable deterioration. Real salaries today represent 35% of the level of 1989. All of this taken together has affected the government’s credibility.

Despite systematic declarations to the contrary, it is necessary to increase the speed of reforms and to reduce the number of experiments that are undertaken prior to transformations. The time lost worsens the economic situation of the citizens.

8 January 2015