作者： admin

On September 8, 2026, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, who also serves as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, convened a high-level meeting at the Palace of the Revolution with more than 30 leaders of top-performing state-owned economic entities. The gathering centered on advancing the country’s sweeping 176-point economic and social transformation agenda, a reform package designed to level the playing field between state-owned enterprises and other economic actors across the island.

The meeting was co-led by other senior Cuban leadership, including Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz, Vice President Salvador Valdés Mesa, Central Committee Organization Secretary Roberto Morales Ojeda, and Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman Waugh. Moderated by Roberto Ricardo Marrero, head of the National Institute of State Business Assets, the discussion offered space for participating business leaders to share on-the-ground results from early reform implementation, as well as to unpack existing strengths, emerging threats, and ongoing challenges facing the state-owned enterprise sector.

Multiple enterprise representatives highlighted tangible early progress from the reforms. Alberto Vicente Águila Abreus, general manager of the National Beekeeping Company, noted that working groups have tailored reform rollout to the specific needs of the beekeeping sector, with new flexible financing policies already enabling faster interim payments to primary producers. Wilson Ramírez Peña, president of the Agricultural Logistics Business Group (Gelma), which operates across most Cuban municipalities, acknowledged that the radical scope of the changes has sparked uncertainty among frontline workers, underscoring the critical need for ongoing open dialogue and experience-sharing to build broader buy-in.

Oscar Carvajal Serrano, general director of the Automotive Group under the Ministry of Transportation, reported that the new flexibilities have already put his sector on a strong financial footing. He confirmed that no subsidiary company will end 2026 with a loss, with projections for growth in both tax contributions and corporate profits. “Our companies now face no structural barriers to progress, and we have the autonomy to resolve our own problems,” Carvajal Serrano said, adding that the reforms represent a critical long-term leap forward that will require sustained effort to deliver full results.

Leaders from other key sectors, including pharmaceutical giant Labiofam, the hydraulics industry, and the electronics sector, echoed these observations. Edel Gómez Gómez, general director of the Comandante Camilo Cienfuegos Electronic Industrial Company, emphasized that the reforms fulfill a longstanding demand of state-owned enterprises: equal operating status alongside non-state and private actors. “These changes remove long-standing bureaucratic obstacles and barriers, allowing us to move faster to generate the wealth our country needs right now,” Gómez Gómez explained.

In closing remarks, President Díaz-Canel noted that the meeting followed a similar gathering just days earlier with representatives of Cuba’s non-state business sector, and that regular cross-sector meetings will continue moving forward. Future discussions will include leaders from state-owned, non-state, and cooperative business segments, with the goal of integrating all groups into a unified national business system aligned with Cuba’s broader economic and social model.

Díaz-Canel explained that a large share of the 176 transformation measures, which are organized into 23 thematic areas, already have full legal backing through new regulations and laws published in the Official Gazette. However, he urged enterprises not to wait for final regulatory approval to begin designing their own local implementation strategies, noting that dozens of the most proactive pioneering companies have already developed their roadmaps and are well-positioned to accelerate progress after taking early risks.

The president stressed the urgent need to update outdated leadership and management styles across the state sector, emphasizing that all reform efforts must center on frontline worker participation. He highlighted two key priorities for the remainder of 2026: company-level debates on the 176 transformations, and collaborative development of the 2027 national economic plan. “If workers do not embrace the transformations, there will be no transformation,” Díaz-Canel said, noting that reform is an iterative process that should welcome worker suggestions and course corrections identified by on-the-ground teams. For the 2027 plan, he added, priorities should emerge directly from worker input, reflecting the new autonomy granted to state enterprises.

He also pushed back against a common misperception among some local leaders that the reforms are primarily focused on immediate salary increases, reminding attendees that sustainable wage growth depends entirely on increased productivity and domestic wealth creation.

Framing the socialist state-owned enterprise system as Cuba’s core economic actor, Díaz-Canel reaffirmed the government and party’s full confidence in the sector’s ability to lead national economic recovery amid ongoing external economic pressure. “We must build productive sovereignty, strengthen connections between all economic actors, and leverage the national political will to help the state-owned enterprise system deliver on its promise to the Cuban people,” he stated.

The meeting ended with a collective call to action for sector leaders to embrace internal change and drive the reform agenda forward, cementing the role of state enterprises as the engine of Cuba’s ongoing economic evolution.

On September 8, 2026, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla unveiled a comprehensive report detailing the devastating human and economic harm inflicted by the United States’ decades-long economic, commercial, and financial blockade against Cuba, covering the 12-month period from March 2025 to February 2026. Speaking to an assembled audience of domestic and international journalists, Rodríguez framed the current intensification of the U.S. policy as an intentional act of collective punishment that meets the international legal definition of genocide.

Rodríguez painted a visceral picture of daily life for ordinary Cubans under the tightened blockade, describing widespread, prolonged power cuts that leave communities with just two to three hours of electricity access, or less, each day. “The long months living with only two or three hours of electricity a day or less, food spoiling, the heat that makes it impossible to sleep, parents fanning their babies, children doing their homework in near darkness, young people without internet access or recreation, grandparents without television or, sometimes, even radio—all family life is damaged,” he said.

The most acute crisis stems from a U.S. executive order imposed in January 2026 that formalized a full fuel blockade, which prohibits fuel imports, intimidates international shipping and tanker companies from delivering cargo to Cuba, and even blocks shipments of spare parts for the country’s existing thermoelectric and solar energy infrastructure. Rodríguez explained that 11 of Cuba’s 15 operational thermal power generation units are currently out of service for critical maintenance that cannot be completed due to blocked parts, resulting in a combined generating capacity shortfall of 1,400 megawatts. Despite Cuba’s rapid push to expand domestic solar energy capacity – with new photovoltaic parks able to be constructed in as little as 45 days – U.S. threats are now blocking shipments of solar panels and energy storage batteries needed to complete these projects. The energy crisis has rippled across every sector of Cuban society, from cutting power to water pumping stations that rely on electric infrastructure to disrupting public transportation that leaves most of the country’s vehicle fleet idled for lack of fuel, forcing students and workers to walk long distances to reach schools and workplaces.

The human cost of the blockade is most severe in Cuba’s universal public health system, which has long been a point of national pride. Rodríguez detailed how routine power cuts put vulnerable patients at extreme risk: newborns relying on electrically powered incubators must be sustained by manual ventilation when backup generators fail, and some emergency surgeries have been completed using only the light from rechargeable lamps or medical staff’s personal cell phones. More than 95% of the country’s medical equipment is affected by shortages of spare parts and supplies. Thousands of patients on hemodialysis face disrupted care due to ambulance fuel shortages, and 100,000 people – including 12,000 children – are currently on surgical waiting lists. The report documents that the childhood cancer survival rate has fallen from 85% to 65% due to blocked access to cancer medications and treatment supplies, with more than 70 people dying from the disease each day. Rodríguez emphasized that the rise in infant mortality recorded between 2018 and 2025 was entirely preventable: “These are children, not numbers. These are deaths that should not have happened” because Cuba was stripped of access to legitimate medical resources needed for its robust public health system.

The 2025–2026 report quantifies the total direct economic losses from the blockade at $8.083 billion, a 7% increase from the prior 12-month reporting period. Cumulative total damages, calculated at current dollar values, reach $178.7 billion; adjusted for gold price appreciation against the U.S. dollar, cumulative damages top $3.89 trillion. Without the blockade, Cuban GDP would have grown by 10.8% in 2025 alone. The energy blockade alone caused more than $802 million in direct losses over the reporting period, with a 2.67 million ton shortfall in planned fuel imports and more than 980 gigawatt-hours of lost generation capacity. The agricultural sector recorded $848 million in losses, with irrigation access falling to just 2 hours per day from the required 16 during the critical cold growing season, and 20,000 tons of prepositioned United Nations food aid for vulnerable communities held up by fuel shortages for distribution. The education sector recorded $98 million in combined losses, with 30% of students forced to relocate to access classes, and critical assistive technologies for disabled students – including 21 irreparable Braille machines and limited access to cochlear implants – left unavailable. Tourism, one of Cuba’s largest export sectors, suffered more than $2 billion in losses, while the national biopharmaceutical sector recorded $134 million in losses.

Rodríguez rejected claims that the harm inflicted by the blockade is accidental “collateral damage,” stressing that the suffering of the Cuban people is a deliberately planned outcome. He drew a parallel between the current policy and the genocide unfolding in Gaza, noting: “It is the same ruthless sentiment and destructive spirit behind the genocide being committed in Gaza. In Cuba, it is silent, without bombs, but it is killing nonetheless.” He also linked the current U.S. policy to the 19th century Spanish reconcentration policy that killed hundreds of thousands of Cubans, arguing that the ideological architects of the modern blockade, from mid-20th century U.S. policy planner Lester Mallory to current U.S. politicians and State Department officials, carry forward the same hostile intent to subjugate Cuba to foreign control for the benefit of anti-Cuban interest groups based in Miami.

Addressing claims from the U.S. government that it has provided $100 million in humanitarian aid to Cuba, Rodríguez called the assertion a deliberate falsehood. He noted that only a single small shipment of food and hygiene products for 700 families has been delivered to date, and challenged U.S. officials to disclose when full aid will arrive, why implementation has been delayed for months, and whether it will include critical medicine and food that Cuban communities urgently need. He clarified that Cuba welcomes all humanitarian aid offered in accordance with international law and UN norms, but will not accept aid that comes with political strings.

On the topic of bilateral talks between Cuba and the U.S., Rodríguez confirmed that exploratory discussions with the U.S. State Department are ongoing, but no progress has been made due to a lack of good faith on the U.S. side. Cuba remains open to continuing negotiations on the basis of sovereign equality, mutual respect, no preconditions, and non-interference in internal affairs, he said, but no binding agreements or roadmaps have been reached to date.

Responding to questions about recent economic and social reforms approved by Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power, Rodríguez emphasized that these reforms are an exercise of Cuba’s sovereign right to shape its own domestic policy, and do not require any approval or comment from the U.S. government. He added that broad sectors of U.S. society, including members of Congress, business leaders, and Cuban Americans living in the U.S., have expressed strong interest in exploring new trade and investment opportunities created by the reforms. The U.S. blockade’s recent escalation, particularly the energy strangulation policy, has hit small and medium-sized Cuban private enterprises particularly hard, with more than 7,000 pre-paid, contracted cargo containers still blocked from entering the country, most carrying food, medicine, and medical devices. Rodríguez called the energy blockade an act of war that violates freedom of navigation and international trade norms in peacetime.

Rodríguez noted that the damage figures included in the 2025–2026 report do not yet include the full impact of the January 2026 energy blockade and new secondary sanctions, whose effects only began to be felt after the reporting period’s cut-off. The report’s methodology, he added, adheres to strict international accounting standards and was previously audited and validated by a U.S. congressional commission. The Cuban government will release a full update on the additional damages from the recent escalation as soon as data collection is completed.

On the topic of rising threats of direct U.S. military aggression against Cuba, Rodríguez warned that the Cuban government takes these threats seriously, as multiple credible sources, independent analysts, and U.S. NGOs have documented active military preparations for a potential attack. He noted that senior U.S. officials, including the president, secretary of state, and secretary of defense, have publicly named direct military action as an option on the table. “Our people, our State, take them very seriously and are preparing to defend with determination, to the utmost, our independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity,” he said. A U.S. military attack would serve no legitimate U.S. national interest, he added, and would result in a devastating bloodbath that would kill both Cubans and young U.S. service members forced to fight a war they do not support.

The United Nations General Assembly is set to vote once again on a resolution calling for an end to the U.S. blockade on October 27–28, 2026. Rodríguez said that despite intense U.S. diplomatic pressure and intimidation aimed at UN member states, the Cuban people remain confident in retaining the overwhelming international support the resolution has received for decades. “Behind every statistic is a human face. Behind every blockade measure is a tragedy, harm, or family drama,” he said. “Faced with this cruel challenge, Cuba is working tirelessly. It will never be defeated.” Reaffirming that Cuba poses no threat to the United States, Rodríguez ended with a simple demand: “Let us live in peace.”