Category: Alejandro de Cañas

PedroCarr Private Company Sells Viazul Tickets in Euros From Abroad

While finding any transportation in pesos has become an ordeal, the private company offers routes across the Island to those who can pay in foreign currency.

A brand-new PedroCarr bus stands out in a city battered by the transportation crisis. / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, Juan Diego Rodríguez / Alejandro de Cañas, July 2, 2026 – A large PedroCarr bus, with the company’s logo prominently displayed on its side, left passersby in Central Havana astonished this Thursday. In the midst of Cuba’s transportation crisis, seeing luggage being loaded and passengers about to board is nothing short of a miracle.

PedroCarr, a private small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), has just opened a much easier option for those who can pay from abroad. On Wednesday, the company launched a digital platform to book interprovincial trips, hotel transfers, and transportation from Cuban airports, with fares listed in euros.

“Travel through Cuba with us,” the private company announces in a social media campaign. Through its new website, PedroCarr promises “fast and secure” reservations, bus rentals for excursions and events, as well as connections between the Island’s main cities and tourist destinations.

The company says its regular services in Cuban pesos will continue operating “under the same conditions and accessibility as always.” However, the launch is clearly aimed at Cubans living abroad who pay for their relatives’ travel and foreign tourists—two groups with access to hard currency in a country where the average state salary barely covers a fraction of the cost of any trip sold in euros. continue reading

PedroCarr also offers a downloadable 28-page fare schedule explicitly labeled “Viazul Service Fares”

The most striking aspect is not only the announcement itself but also the documents available on the website. PedroCarr allows users to download a 28-page fare schedule explicitly titled “Viazul Service Fares,” listing routes from airports, provincial capitals, hotels, and tourist destinations across the country.

From Terminal 3 of José Martí International Airport, for example, a transfer to Old Havana costs 10 euros. A trip to Las Tunas is listed at 44 euros, Holguín at 50 euros, Santiago de Cuba at 60 euros, and Baracoa at 74 euros. The fares include two suitcases and vary for children, round trips, and multi-destination itineraries.

The document is virtually identical to the one used by Viazul, the service operated by the state-owned National Bus Company, traditionally aimed at tourists and passengers paying in foreign currency. PedroCarr does not explain in its announcement whether it acts as an intermediary, a ticketing agency, or a transportation contractor for Viazul, nor does it specify what portion of the fare remains with the private company.

The platform presents itself as a bus transportation management and reservation system, but the network of routes it offers covers virtually the entire country, from Viñales to Baracoa, as well as airports, island resorts, and hotel complexes.

PedroCarr is not a newly created company. Cuba’s Ministry of Economy and Planning included it in its official registry of new economic actors as a private SME based in the municipality of Las Tunas, dedicated to ground passenger transportation. It was authorized in 2022 during the first major wave of small and medium-sized enterprises approved by the Government.

In February of this year, the company’s own fleet consisted of ten Yutong buses and seven Foton minibuses, in addition to another 17 leased vehicles.

Behind the business is Pedro Yosvany Carbonell Fernández, known as El Chino. The official Las Tunas newspaper 26 identified him in 2022 as the manager of what was then called Pedrocar y Socio, noting that the project began on May 8 of that year. Its original goal was to transport passengers between Las Tunas and Havana.

A Prensa Latina report published in February of this year refers to him as president of PedroCarr and states that the company operated the Havana–Puerto Padre and Havana–Las Tunas routes with fares in Cuban pesos. To acquire its buses, the private company obtained financing through an unidentified Spanish institution, arranged via Consultoría Internacional. PedroCarr also worked with foreign suppliers, including China’s Yutong Bus and Mexico’s Sunshine Best.

At that time, the company’s own fleet consisted of ten Yutong buses and seven Foton minibuses. Those 17 vehicles were supplemented by another 17 leased from the state-owned National Bus Company, giving PedroCarr a total of 34 vehicles under its management. The launch of a platform offering connections throughout the Island now points to a further expansion of its operations.

The service exists, the bus and fuel appear without problems, and reservations can be made without long lines… but in euros.

The private company’s growth has therefore taken place hand in hand with public institutions. PedroCarr has marketed transportation capacity through state bus terminals and has operated in a sector where fuel shortages, lack of spare parts, and vehicle scarcity have left numerous state-run routes paralyzed.

For a Cuban living on the Island, paying 44 euros for a trip from Havana Airport to Las Tunas amounts to tens of thousands of pesos on the informal market. For a relative paying from Miami or Madrid, however, it may be a quick solution when state-run tickets are impossible to obtain.

That contrast summarizes the direction much of the Cuban economy has taken. The service exists, the buses and fuel are readily available, and reservations can be made without long lines, but only if someone, usually from abroad, has euros.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The Cuban Regime Is Applying a Timid “Chainsaw” to Its Government Apparatus

Cuba’s Council of Ministers proposes reducing the number of state entities from 27 to 21, although it has not yet revealed which ones will disappear or be merged.

The announced reduction may be a sign of belated rationality or merely a cosmetic operation. / Granma

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, Alejandro de Cañas, 10 May 2026 / The Cuban government has decided to downsize its own machinery, though instead of a chainsaw it is using garden shears. The Council of Ministers approved a draft bill to reduce the number of agencies in the Central State Administration from 27 to 21, a pruning of six entities in a country where bureaucracy has grown for decades at the same pace as inefficiency. The measure is not yet in effect; it must still be approved by the National Assembly, but it already marks the first concrete step in a restructuring announced weeks ago.

The news was published on May 9 in Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party. The article does not identify which agencies will disappear, be absorbed, or be merged—a significant omission in a reform presented as a fundamental redesign of the state apparatus.

In presenting the proposal, legal expert Andry Matilla Correa stated that “this is not merely a structural change, but rather a redesign of each of the Bodies of the Central State Administration (OACE).” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz was even more direct: “A small country, a country with such a complex situation, cannot have such a large structure, so much bureaucracy, which makes processes inefficient, and therefore requires a different design.”

For a country with fewer than ten million inhabitants, the structure seems bloated even when compared to governments of larger countries.

The decision didn’t come out of nowhere. In April, Miguel Díaz-Canel had already announced that the regime was preparing a “restructuring” of the state apparatus. In an interview with RT, the president stated: “We are also considering a restructuring of the entire state, administrative, and business apparatus; that is, reducing bureaucracy. This isn’t just about the structures themselves, because even a small structure can be bureaucratic. We have to work in both directions.” He also announced the goal of achieving “fewer continue reading

ministries and fewer intermediate structures between the territories and the country.”

That April announcement also had a regulatory precedent. On the 9th of that month, Decree 127 on budgeted institutions was published, officially presented as a regulation intended to “resize the Central State Administration,” improve its structures, and reduce the administrative burden on the public budget. In other words, before the proposed figure of 21 agencies was known, the Government had already begun to prepare the legal and rhetorical groundwork for streamlining its apparatus.

The reform is late, but not for lack of signals. Cuba currently maintains 22 ministries and five non-ministerial agencies within the 27 existing State Administrative Bodies (OACE), according to the institutional list published by the Presidency. For a country with fewer than ten million inhabitants, an impoverished economy, a chronic shortage of foreign currency, and deteriorating public services, the structure seems bloated, even when compared to the governments of larger countries.

If we consider only the number of ministries, Cuba has 22, the same number as Spain and more than Mexico, with 21 state secretariats; Colombia, with 19 ministries; and Argentina, which, after Javier Milei’s “chainsaw” reshuffle, reduced its cabinet to eight ministries. There is no standardized global ranking , because each country classifies its portfolios and agencies differently, but Cuba clearly ranks among the top countries when compared to several leading governments in Latin America.

The big question is which six organs will be affected.

For years, the Cuban regime presented itself as a model of rational planning, but it has maintained a cumbersome, fragmented, and costly state architecture inherited from the former Soviet Union. Even the official press now admits that this structure hinders processes and multiplies bureaucracy. This acknowledgment comes as the Cuban economy is experiencing one of its worst crises in decades, with blackouts, inflation, declining productivity, and a state increasingly unable to guarantee basic necessities.

The great unknown is which six agencies will be affected. Officially, this hasn’t been announced yet. Granma only reported the total reduction from 27 to 21. Logically, the possible candidates include the Institute of Information and Social Communication, which could be integrated into the Ministry of Communications; the National Institute of Territorial Planning and Urbanism, which could be absorbed by the Ministry of Construction; and the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources, which could be transferred to the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment.

Among the ministries, the mergers that would make the most administrative sense would be Education with Higher Education, Industries with the Food Industry, or, more debatable, Domestic Trade with Foreign Trade and Investment. For now, all of this remains in the realm of conjecture, not a published decision.

The announced reduction may be a sign of belated rationality or merely a cosmetic operation. The decisive factor will not be how many titles disappear from the organizational charts, but how many procedures, layers of command, and spaces of irresponsibility and corruption disappear with them.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.