Miami-Dade County Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez called the Cuban government’s announcement a “desperate maneuver by the dictatorship to try to save itself.”
14ymedio, Havana, March 16, 2026 — Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, said this Monday that the Government will allow “Cubans who reside abroad even without holding effective residence in Cuba and, based on the category offered by the Cuban migration law called ‘investors and businessmen’, to participate in or own private companies” within the country.
Pérez-Oliva spoke in an interview broadcast on Cuban State TV’s Mesa Redonda [Round Table] program this Monday, after previously giving statements to the foreign press on the subject. In his remarks, he indicated that emigrants will be able to “partner” “with Cuban private companies.” He clarified that this does not refer only to small businesses; it can include infrastructure and large private and state-owned enterprises.
“The doors of our country are open to Cubans abroad,” he emphasized, repeatedly stating that “there are no limitations” for Cubans who want to invest.
He also spoke about the participation of these Cubans in the country’s financial and banking system, something that was not permitted until now. This strategy will allow them to serve as “support for other productive or service sectors.” Furthermore, the emigrants will be able to “open and operate foreign currency bank accounts in Cuban banks. They will be able to do so in the same way as any person or institution residing in our country,” he added.
“The doors of our country are open to Cubans abroad.”
The topic was first reported by El Nuevo Herald on Saturday , and on Monday, in an interview published by NBC News, Pérez-Oliva shared details about the anticipated reform, which was to be announced that same day. “Cuba is open to having a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies and also with Cubans residing in the U.S. and their descendants,” declared the deputy prime minister and great-nephew of Fidel and Raúl Castro.
Pérez-Oliva stated in the interview with the US television network that “this goes beyond the commercial sphere,” and added: “It also applies to investments: not only small investments, but also large ones, especially in infrastructure.”
At the same time, the deputy prime minister did not miss the opportunity to point to the US embargo as the origin of all evils: “The US blockade*, the policy of hostility against Cuba, is undoubtedly an element that affects the development of these transformations.”
Currently, many private businesses in Cuba receive informal financing, through remittances from relatives abroad, especially from the US, something that the reform would explicitly legalize.
Pedro Monreal has warned that the reform could lead to new inequalities within the country’s private sector itself.
Regarding the expectations generated by the details of this measure, Cuban economist Pedro Monreal has warned that the reform could cause new inequalities within the country’s private sector itself and has doubts about the way it is conceived by the State.
“Foreign investors enjoy tariff, tax, and foreign trade benefits, as well as a business structure that private micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) lack,” Monreal points out. This would imply that Cubans residing abroad could enjoy legal and economic advantages over private entrepreneurs within the country.
The specialist posted on his X profile this Monday: “What the Cuban government announces today will not be attractive to many emigrants if it is limited to providing ‘a space for participation in the country’s economic and social development.’ It should go much further: establishing rights and guaranteeing mechanisms to implement them.”
Private business owners in Cuba have expressed similar concerns. Engineer Yulieta Hernández Díaz, executive director of the Pilares Construction Group, which provides services on the island, stated in a social media post that the problem lies not in who invests, but in the conditions under which that access is organized.
If investment is managed within an opaque system, without clear rules, without a level playing field and without transparency, it does not create development, but rather distortion and inequality.
“If investment—whether foreign or from the diaspora—is managed within an opaque system, without clear rules, without a level playing field, and without institutional transparency, what is created is not development, but distortion and inequality,” warns Hernández, adding: “Cuba needs a framework that guarantees equity, transparency, and coherent public policies, allowing all economic actors to grow and develop.”
The EFE news agency, for its part, states that, according to its sources, the possibility of facilitating the purchase of real estate on the island for Cubans residing abroad is being studied, especially for those who left the country before the 2013 immigration reform.
“It’s historic,” Cuban-American businessman Hugo Cancio told EFE when asked about the reforms. “It could be the beginning of the dismantling of the US economic embargo against Cuba,” he said.
Cuban economist Tamarys Bahamonde tempers expectations: “The impact will be greater or lesser depending on the conditions and context surrounding the authorization of these investments,” she says. “Success will depend not only on how Cuba designs and implements it, but also on the flexibility offered by the US,” she added.
The measure has also generated rejection among sectors of the Cuban exile community in the United States. Miami-Dade County Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez issued a formal statement this Monday in which he described the government’s economic opening as “a desperate maneuver by the dictatorship to try to save itself.”
“In a moment of clear desperation, the same regime that confiscated property, expelled families, and destroyed the future of generations of Cubans wants those same exiles to return and invest their money in the system that oppressed them. The dictatorship is not seeking reforms. It is seeking to survive,” the statement reads.
Fernández calls on Cubans abroad and foreign companies not to invest in the island until there are political freedoms. “The solution for Cuba is not doing business with the tyranny,” he states, insisting that the priority must be “the end of that regime” before any economic opening.
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*Translator’s note: There is, in fact, no US ‘blockade’ on Cuba, but this continues to be the term the Cuban government prefers to apply to the ongoing US embargo. During the Cuban Missile Crisis the US ordered a Naval blockade (which it called a ‘quarantine’) on Cuba in 1962, between 22 October and 20 November of that year. The blockade was lifted when Russia agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from the Island. The embargo had been imposed earlier in February of the same year, and although modified from time to time, it remains in force.
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