标签： Cuba

On Sunday, June 22, 2026, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, who also serves as First Secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee, publicly shared his deep grief over the passing of iconic revolutionary leader Ramiro Valdés Menéndez via his social media channels.

In an emotional statement posted online, Díaz-Canel framed the loss of the veteran revolutionary as akin to losing a beloved father, a sentiment that captures the deep respect and affection he has long held for Valdés. “That’s how I always loved and respected him. This way I will remember his support and advice, his discreet collaboration and exemplary dedication to the service of the Homeland,” the president wrote.

Díaz-Canel emphasized that every moment of Valdés’ life was defined by unwavering loyalty: to former revolutionary leaders Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro, to his fellow revolutionary fighters, and to the core principles of the Moncada Program. From the 1953 assault on the dictatorship’s Moncada Barracks — a pivotal moment that launched the Cuban revolution — to his final breath on this Father’s Day, Valdés never wavered in defending the just mission of the revolutionary movement, Díaz-Canel noted. The commander’s death has cast a shadow of sadness over the holiday for Cubans across the country.

Closing his tribute, the Cuban president offered a final salute to the legendary revolutionary: “Always onward to victory, Commander!”

The announcement was originally reported by Cuba’s state-run Granma news outlet, marking the passing of one of the last remaining founding figures of the Cuban Revolution.

In an address delivered to the Third Extraordinary Session of the National Assembly of People’s Power, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz outlined a landmark package of 176 strategic economic and social reforms, framed as a necessary adaptation to one of the most severe crises the island nation has faced since the 1990s Special Period.

Prime Minister Marrero Cruz opened by attributing the current national hardship to the cumulative impact of intensifying United States coercive measures, which have cut off fuel supplies and almost completely dried up foreign currency revenue. These external pressures, he explained, have severely degraded the country’s energy infrastructure and eroded living standards for millions of Cubans, while also derailing the gradual implementation of economic reforms first approved by the Communist Party of Cuba in 2011. That framework delivered consistent positive results until 2019, when the US drastically escalated its sanctions regime, with further tightening implemented in January 2025.

Against this backdrop, the Cuban government and Communist Party have developed the new reform package, which draws broad input from popular consultations, 133 expert consultations, and public debate that resulted in 66.7% of 390 public proposals being incorporated into the final draft. Marrero Cruz emphasized that the reforms do not represent an abandonment of core socialist principles or the revolution’s core social gains, but rather a pragmatic adaptation designed to preserve socialism under unprecedented external pressure.

“These transformations find their foundation in the thinking of our revolutionary leaders, who have long argued that adapting to current conditions is not a renunciation of socialism, but a requirement for its survival,” Marrero Cruz stated, referencing Fidel Castro’s 1993 call for pragmatic action during the original Special Period. Echoing Raúl Castro’s previous guidance on updating Cuba’s economic model, the reforms reject dogmatism, decouple socialism from rigid egalitarianism, and formalize the role of market mechanisms as tools for resource allocation that must be incorporated and regulated by socialist planning.

The sweeping package of reforms, grouped into 23 core pillars, touches nearly every aspect of Cuba’s economic and social life. Key changes for the state-owned enterprise sector include granting broad operational autonomy, decentralizing price approval for wholesale and retail goods, resizing upper management bodies to remove unnecessary state functions, allowing enterprises to set their own salary scales based on financial capacity, and gradually eliminating state subsidies that currently consume 92.5 billion pesos annually, half of which go to subsidizing electricity rates.

Notably, the reforms open the door to transforming state-owned enterprises into share-based commercial companies, with the state retaining a majority stake only in strategic sectors, and allow both non-state entities and foreign investors to purchase shares in state firms. A national program will also be implemented to value and title state assets, allowing underutilized assets to be monetized through long-term leases to domestic and foreign investors.

For the non-state sector, the reforms remove long-standing restrictions that have slowed growth. The cap of 100 employees for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) will be eliminated, individuals will be allowed to own more than one private business, and 70 of the 125 current prohibited activities for non-state actors will be opened up. Non-state entities will also be granted formal land rights to develop operations, removing the current ban that forces many small businesses to operate out of private homes, and will be allowed full access to foreign currency bank accounts. Artificial intelligence will be deployed to streamline approval processes for new economic actors, cutting red tape that has left thousands of applications pending.

In the agricultural sector, the government will allow private companies to operate in agricultural production, open a national input market with foreign currency access, grant indefinite usufruct land rights to any domestic or foreign entity with a viable production project, and eliminate the requirement that land usufructuaries work the land personally, allowing investors to hire labor to operate productive farms. Agricultural pricing will be fully decentralized to producers, and cooperatives will be granted the right to directly import inputs and export products without going through central government intermediaries.

Major changes are also being implemented to decentralize power to municipal governments, which will gain authority to approve local investments, manage local land use, directly conduct foreign trade, retain their own foreign currency earnings, and approve foreign direct investment within their borders without additional central government approval. Municipalities will also be allowed to hold shares in local companies, with dividends flowing into a local development fund to support community projects. A sweeping restructuring of agricultural administration will eliminate distorted provincial and municipal agricultural delegations, replacing them with streamlined national land and livestock management bodies and local food production promotion agencies.

To address the ongoing national energy crisis, the reforms open fuel importation and retail marketing to private and foreign capital, require new service stations to integrate independent solar power systems to avoid adding strain to the national grid, and offer tax incentives for private investment in renewable energy projects in public facilities. A 1% tax on fuel imports will be dedicated to supporting social institutions, with investments in renewable energy allowing actors to deduct that investment from their tax obligation.

The reform package also places core social protections at its center, including a 53% increase in the national minimum wage from 2,100 to 3,210 pesos that will take effect in July, covering all public sector workers and requiring private sector employers to also meet the new minimum wage. The government will annually adjust the minimum wage and pension benefits based on inflation and fiscal capacity. Social security reforms will eliminate contribution caps for the non-state sector, count up to 10 years of family caregiving toward the 30-year service requirement for pensions, and provide income support for out-of-work young people who enroll in job training programs.

Banking and financial sector reforms open the sector to private domestic and foreign capital, eliminate prior authorization requirements for foreign currency accounts, implement a regulatory framework for virtual assets, remove all limits on bank transfers and withdrawals for individuals and legal entities, and introduce gradual national currency devaluation to close the gap between the official and market exchange rates. A new foreign exchange market will be created with private exchange houses and a real-time digital trading system.

Tax reforms will introduce value-added tax (VAT) gradually to eliminate cascading taxation, reduce corporate income tax rates for most businesses, introduce a gross income tax for companies that report losses for more than two years, and adjust personal income tax brackets to reduce the burden on middle and low earners following recent inflation. Price setting will be almost fully decentralized to enterprises and local governments, ending central government price ceilings.

Foreign investment reforms lift the current ban on foreign investment in Cuban private companies, extend surface rights for foreign investors to 99 years, allow foreign firms to hire workers directly without mandatory state employment agencies, and apply the principle of tacit approval to all investment permit processes, meaning applications are automatically approved if no response is issued within the required timeframe. Reforms to the tourism sector open all tourist destinations, including Old Havana and restricted island keys, to all business models including foreign investment, allow real estate development in tourist areas, and open car rental and travel agency operations to non-state and foreign operators.

Digital transformation is a core pillar of the reforms, with plans to create a national technology hub for artificial intelligence, software and hardware development, establish a national interoperability framework for AI, allow private investment in data centers and telecommunications infrastructure, and formally recognize data as a factor of production alongside land, labor, capital and entrepreneurship.

Prime Minister Marrero Cruz confirmed that the proposed transformations require changes to more than 140 existing legal provisions, including 15 repeals, 22 full overhauls, and 79 partial amendments, plus 32 new pieces of legislation. A legal review found that the reforms are consistent with nine articles of the Cuban constitution and do not require constitutional amendments.

Closing the address, Marrero Cruz reiterated that the defense of the socialist homeland remains the country’s top priority, and that the reforms are aligned with the revolutionary project led by Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro. “These transformations do not constitute a deviation from the socialist project; on the contrary, they respond to the inherent logic of its development,” he said. “We are building socialism guided by the ideas of Fidel and Raúl, and these reforms have the essential purpose of improving the quality of life of our compatriots, so that every Cuban can contribute their best to building the prosperous and sustainable socialism that our people deserve.”

The address concluded with the traditional revolutionary slogans: “Long live Free Cuba! Long live Fidel and Raúl! Homeland or Death! We will overcome!”

Cuba’s top Party, state and government leadership has announced with deep sadness that iconic Cuban Revolution Commander Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, a decorated Hero of the Republic of Cuba and Hero of Labor, passed away on the morning of Sunday, June 21, 2026.

Born in Artemisa in April 1932, Valdés Menéndez grew up in a working-class household shaped by his mother’s deep commitment to the legacies of Cuban independence leaders Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and José Martí. Raised amid the inequalities of pre-revolutionary capitalist Cuba, he developed unshakable patriotic values from an early age. As a young adult working as a lineman’s apprentice, he first cut his political teeth organizing to fight unfair working conditions for electrical sector employees.

When Fulgencio Batista launched his 1952 military coup, Valdés Menéndez was working in the sugar cane fields of a local mill. He did not hesitate to join the growing resistance movement against the Batista dictatorship, aligning himself with Fidel Castro and a cohort of fellow young revolutionaries from his home province of Artemisa. Just over a year later, he took part in the landmark July 26, 1953 attacks on the Moncada Barracks and the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Barracks, a turning point that ignited the Cuban Revolution.

From that moment forward, Valdés Menéndez stood on the front lines of every phase of the revolutionary struggle, alongside Fidel Castro Ruz and Raúl Castro Ruz, to whom he maintained lifelong, unwavering loyalty and admiration. He carried his revolutionary credentials through every chapter of the movement: as a surviving Moncada attacker, a political prisoner imprisoned on the Isle of Pines, an exiled organizer in Mexico, a member of the historic Granma expedition that relaunched the revolution in 1956, and second-in-command of Column No. 8 under the legendary Ernesto “Che” Guevara in the Sierra Maestra mountains.

By the time the revolution claimed victory on January 1, 1959, Valdés Menéndez had already earned his rank of Commander through years of frontline combat. In the decades that followed, he went on to hold a long list of senior military and government positions that shaped modern Cuba. These included Second Chief of La Cabaña, Military Chief of Cuba’s central region, and head of state security organs during the pivotal 1961 Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion. He later served as Minister of the Interior, First Deputy Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), Aide to the Commander-in-Chief, President of the SIME Electronics Industrial Group, Minister of Information Technology and Communications, Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers, and Deputy Prime Minister — a post he held until his death.

A founding member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and its Political Bureau, Valdés Menéndez also served for decades as a deputy to the National Assembly of People’s Power. Among his most notable high-stakes missions was leading the effort to search for, locate, exhume, and repatriate to Cuba the remains of Che Guevara and his fellow revolutionary fighters who died in Bolivia in 1967. Over his decades of service, his extraordinary contributions to the Cuban nation were recognized with dozens of state orders and highest decorations.

In announcing his passing, Cuban leadership emphasized that Valdés Menéndez leaves behind a decades-long record of exceptional, selfless service to the Cuban people. His life and example will remain a lasting paradigm for future generations of Cubans, remembered as a steadfast revolutionary, fearless combatant, and unwavering patriot whose solid convictions and unlimited devotion to his country defined a lifetime of commitment to Cuba’s sovereignty and people.

On June 18, 2026, Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP) held its Third Extraordinary Session of the 10th Legislature at Havana’s Convention Palace to evaluate landmark proposals for national economic and social transformation. The hybrid gathering brought Havana-based deputies together in person, with legislators from across the country joining remotely, and included virtual participation from revolutionary leader Army General Raúl Castro Ruz. In-person attendees were led by Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, while ANPP President Esteban Lazo Hernández opened the session by commemorating the 19th anniversary of the death of Vilma Espín Guillois, a iconic heroine of the Cuban Revolution.

Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz presented the transformation plan to the assembly, framing the reforms as a sovereign strategic adaptation to the most challenging economic context the country has faced since the 1990s Special Period. Marrero Cruz outlined the multiple pressures weighing on Cuba’s economy: decades of coercive U.S. sanctions that have intensified since 2019, with additional escalations implemented in January 2025, have severely disrupted fuel supplies, cut off foreign currency revenue, damaged national energy infrastructure, and reduced household quality of life. He acknowledged longstanding internal shortcomings alongside external pressure, noting that these combined factors have slowed progress on reforms first approved during the 6th Party Congress in 2011, which delivered positive results through mid-2019.

Rooted in the legacy of Fidel Castro Ruz’s guidance during the 1990s Special Period and Raúl Castro Ruz’s principles of pragmatic economic updating, the plan rejects rigid dogma and redefines the relationship between socialist planning and market mechanisms. Marrero Cruz emphasized that the proposed reforms are not a retreat from socialism, but a sovereign adjustment of development tools to fit Cuba’s current circumstances, designed to preserve core revolutionary gains while adapting to new realities. The proposal emerged from a broad consultative process that incorporated 390 public submissions, 66.7% of which were accepted, plus 69 additional recommendations approved by the Communist Party Political Bureau, resulting in a final document of 176 proposals organized across 23 core axes covering all areas of Cuban economic and social life.

The first axis overhauls the governance of state-owned enterprises, granting greater operational autonomy, decentralizing price-setting authority, eliminating rigid national salary scales in favor of company-level wage negotiation tied to financial performance and inflation, and allowing state firms to convert to share-based commercial entities with minority non-state participation, while guaranteeing state majority control over strategic sectors. For non-state economic actors, the plan eases approval requirements, raises the 100-employee cap on private businesses, allows individual ownership of multiple companies, expands permitted corporate structures including public limited companies, reduces the list of banned activities for non-state firms, and integrates artificial intelligence to streamline approval processes on the national Economic Actors Platform. The plan also opens agricultural production to private participation, creates a national production linkage platform that requires state-owned firms to publish local sourcing needs, and offers tax incentives for purchasing domestic inputs.

On ownership reform, the plan reaffirms social ownership of the fundamental means of production while expanding non-state management of assets, authorizing the purchase of state enterprise shares by domestic and foreign, state and non-state entities, and creates targeted investment incentives for Cuban residents and Cubans living abroad to invest in national companies, while banning exploitative labor practices and guaranteeing labor and social rights. The reform of economic planning transitions from centralized physical resource allocation to a market-oriented financial planning model, incorporates non-state economic activity into national development plans through 2030, and decentralizes investment approval authority to individual firms based on their financial capacity.

Additional core reforms include a significant downsizing of the central state administration, with a planned reduction in the number of ministries and budgeted agencies to improve bureaucratic efficiency, and a broad devolution of authority to municipal governments, including powers over strategic planning, local economic development, foreign investment promotion, and retention of foreign currency earnings. In the energy sector, private and foreign capital is permitted to enter fuel import, distribution and retail, and major tax incentives are offered for renewable energy investment. Agricultural reforms include indefinite usufruct land rights for all types of producers, elimination of the requirement for permanent on-site land cultivation, direct foreign trade authority for agricultural cooperatives, full decentralization of agricultural price-setting, and expanded decentralized financing for primary production.

Social reforms center on digitizing and targeting social assistance for vulnerable populations via the new SOBERANIA platform, requiring all economic actors to contribute to community social support initiatives ranging from pension administration to supporting care institutions and providing food aid to low-income households. The plan replaces universal product subsidies with targeted personal subsidies to vulnerable groups, funded by savings from subsidy elimination, and implements a comprehensive wage reform that ties annual minimum wage and pension adjustments to inflation, eliminates administrative barriers to multiple job holding for skilled professionals, and offers training stipends for unemployed young people.

Banking and financial sector reforms open the sector to private capital under equal regulatory conditions with state-owned banks, eliminate prior authorization requirements for foreign currency accounts, implement a regulatory framework for virtual assets and fintech, and authorize private currency exchange houses as part of a plan to unify Cuba’s exchange rates through gradual currency devaluation. Tax reforms introduce a value-added tax with reduced rates for essential goods, reduce corporate profit tax burdens, adjust personal income tax brackets to account for inflation, and offer targeted incentives for agricultural production and renewable energy investment. Foreign investment is expanded through extended land right terms up to 99 years, decentralized approval with tacit approval for most projects, elimination of mandatory employment agency requirements for hiring, and permission for foreign investment in heritage tourism zones. Additional reforms open tourism to new business models including real estate development, remove restrictions on electric vehicle imports, formalize street vending, expand insurance products, recognize data as a formal factor of production to support the digital and knowledge economy, and create a new cross-institutional working group to update national regulatory frameworks, requiring changes to more than 140 existing Cuban laws and the creation of 32 new high-level regulations.

During the plenary debate, deputies broadly supported the plan while offering constructive amendments, with many emphasizing that the reforms do not represent a departure from socialism, but a necessary adjustment to preserve it amid external pressure. Deputy Danhiz Díaz Pereira called for prioritizing the creation of the social protection fund and wage reform before other transformations to protect vulnerable households, and highlighted the need for strong anti-corruption safeguards as reforms advance. Deputy Carlos Miguel Pérez Reyes argued that partial reform poses a greater risk than full transformation, and called for clear, swift implementation and increased social responsibility from the private sector. Deputy Emilio Interián Rodríguez praised the agricultural reforms as revolutionary, noting they address longstanding barriers to increasing domestic food production.

Closing the debate, President Díaz-Canel stressed that the transformations are the product of decades of national debate, expert input, and the study of international experience, and do not signal a retreat from socialism. He noted that preserving and expanding the revolutionary social justice that Cuba has built requires a productive, dynamic economy to generate the necessary resources, stating: “If we don’t produce, if we don’t generate wealth, if we don’t provide quality services that are inclusive and comprehensive, what kind of social justice are we going to defend?” He emphasized that innovation is the only path forward in the current challenging context.

Prime Minister Marrero Cruz announced that the working group will immediately revise the draft to incorporate deputies’ amendments, and outlined clear institutional responsibilities for implementation: the Cuban Government will lead overall management, the National Assembly will draft required legal changes, and senior party leadership will provide political oversight. The session concluded with a letter from Raúl Castro Ruz, read by Council of Ministers Secretary José Amado Ricardo Guerra, expressing full support for the plan and affirming that the reforms will strengthen socialism and preserve revolutionary gains in Cuba’s current complex circumstances.

Havana, Cuba – Cuba’s Council of State has called an extraordinary third session of the National Assembly of People’s Power, to be held Thursday afternoon during the legislative body’s 10th term. The gathering carries major national significance, as it will bring together parliamentary representatives to evaluate a sweeping set of policy blueprints for economic and social development that were publicly unveiled just days prior by Miguel Diaz-Canel, who serves both as President of Cuba and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC).

Havana – Cuba’s Communist Party (PCC) has formally announced it will host a special plenary session focused on evaluating a sweeping package of economic and social transformation policies first outlined by the country’s top leader. In an official notice published on the PCC’s official digital platform, the party confirmed the session will center on the set of reforms introduced recently by Miguel Diaz-Canel, who serves simultaneously as First Secretary of the PCC Central Committee and President of Cuba, in his addresses to the national media.

The full reform package includes more than 20 separate policy initiatives crafted to modernize Cuba’s long-standing economic model, ramp up domestic production across key sectors, and strengthen governance at both the national and local levels. These updates come as the Cuban economy continues to grapple with deep-seated structural challenges that have hampered growth and stability in recent years.

One of the most high-profile changes proposed would scrap the current rule requiring all import and export activity to be routed exclusively through state-owned enterprises. If approved, this adjustment would open the door for a far wider range of non-state economic actors to participate directly in cross-border trade, a shift that could unlock new growth opportunities for private and mixed-sector businesses operating on the island.

The timing of this plenary session carries particular significance, as Cuba enters what many analysts describe as a make-or-break period for its economic sovereignty. For more than 60 years, the U.S. government has maintained a comprehensive economic blockade against the island, a policy that has systematically restricted Cuba’s access to global markets, foreign investment, and critical resources. This long-standing pressure has exacerbated existing production bottlenecks and contributed to widespread resource shortages that continue to strain the daily lives of Cuban citizens, setting the stage for the PCC’s push for targeted structural updates.

HAVANA, June 18, 2026 – Standing at a defining crossroads for the Cuban nation, President Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, laid out an ambitious, urgent agenda of economic and social transformation during the closing address of the party’s Extraordinary Plenary Session. Held at Havana’s Palace of Revolution on June 17, 2026 – the year marking the centennial of revolutionary icon Fidel Castro Ruz’s birth – the speech framed the reforms as a necessary response to decades of escalating pressure from the United States, paired with long-overdue domestic adjustments to lift the Cuban people out of crisis.

Díaz-Canel opened by anchoring the moment in Cuba’s revolutionary legacy, paying tribute to Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, Hero of the Republic of Cuba, whose lifelong emphasis on party unity and ideological steadfastness has guided the nation through decades of challenge. He painted a stark picture of Cuba’s current context, describing the intensified U.S. economic, commercial and financial blockade as a relentless, genocidal campaign that has inflicted catastrophic harm on daily life across the island. Beyond traditional sanctions, he highlighted the spurious 2021 designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, sweeping new executive orders that have internationalized the blockade via secondary sanctions, and a coordinated campaign of ideological disinformation spread through social media to erode public trust in the revolution.

Against a backdrop of shifting global geopolitics marked by rising hegemonic aggression, erosion of multilateralism and growing global tensions, Díaz-Canel emphasized that the bloc’s decades-long punishment has pushed Cuban families to the breaking point: every liter of fuel, every dose of medicine, every staple food item now carries an extreme markup from financial persecution, while widespread energy shortages disrupt every corner of daily life. “Reality demands urgent and necessary changes,” he stressed. “When life for the people becomes so difficult, the primary duty of the Communist Party and the revolutionary government is not to explain the crisis better, but to change whatever needs to be changed to overcome it.”

The sweeping reform package, months in the making, draws on input from across Cuban society: public consultations on the 2026 Economic and Social Program, contributions from the National Association of Cuban Economists (ANEC), decades of updated policy guidance from previous party congresses, and even studies of socialist construction experiences in China and Vietnam, with artificial intelligence leveraged to evaluate proposals against existing Cuban regulatory frameworks. Díaz-Canel emphasized that the core goal of the changes is not to abandon socialism, but to strengthen it: the transformations will advance social justice, generate new national wealth and distribute that wealth equitably – rejecting abstract egalitarianism in favor of tangible, material progress for all Cubans.

“Without wealth, there is nothing to distribute; we would be speaking of social justice in the abstract,” he argued. “Either we produce under these conditions, create wealth, and then distribute it with social justice and equity – that is the challenge.”

To meet that challenge, Díaz-Canel outlined progress across five simultaneous core priorities: macroeconomic stabilization and recovery of foreign revenue, transformation of Cuba’s outdated economic and social model, agricultural sector revitalization, strengthened accounting and cost management, and proactive mitigation of social costs tied to reform.

Key structural changes include a fundamental reorientation of central planning: instead of micromanaging day-to-day economic activity, the state will focus on building a clear, stable regulatory environment that empowers enterprises and workers to produce efficiently and innovate. State-owned enterprises, which remain the foundational pillar of Cuba’s economy, will gain genuine operational autonomy, with separation of state regulatory functions and business management, and a new “comply or explain” framework to eliminate unnecessary bureaucratic barriers to growth. The National Institute of Business Assets will oversee state assets, hold management accountable for results, and ensure transparency.

Food security, Díaz-Canel declared, is a matter of national sovereignty: “No one has sovereignty with empty plates.” To end chronic food shortages, Cuba will eliminate all idle arable land, expanding land usufruct rights to individual producers, cooperatives, and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) while retaining public ownership of land. Any underutilized plot overgrown with invasive marabou will be reallocated to producers willing to put it to work. Farmers will gain direct access to foreign currency to import critical inputs like seeds and fertilizer, and will be able to earn market-aligned prices for their output, turning agricultural work into a path to prosperity rather than hardship.

On trade and investment, Cuba will eliminate mandatory intermediation for direct imports and exports for both state and non-state enterprises, opening new avenues for productive and export-led growth. The government will pursue targeted debt restructuring, including debt-for-assets swaps that preserve Cuban ownership of strategic assets, as well as debt-for-nature and debt-for-development swaps. The list of activities prohibited to the private sector will be radically overhauled, replacing most outright bans with targeted, responsible regulation, and bureaucratic hurdles for MSME formation and public-private partnerships will be streamlined. Critically, Cuba will open the door to foreign direct investment in domestic private enterprises including MSMEs, with clear rules for ownership, profit repatriation and dispute resolution. Cuban emigrants seeking to invest, donate or launch projects in their homeland will be welcomed with a transparent, stable framework, with no suspicion cast on those who want to contribute to national development.

Energy, a source of daily crisis for Cuban households, will be another top policy priority. Díaz-Canel framed widespread blackouts not as a technical challenge, but as a humanitarian one: “A power outage is the child who couldn’t study for a test, the food that went bad in the refrigerator, the elderly person who spends the night awake, restless, and sweltering.” To rapidly expand clean energy access, Cuba will eliminate all import tariffs and sales taxes on solar technology, energy storage and efficiency equipment, and cut out intermediaries that drive up costs for consumers. New credit mechanisms will bring solar installations within reach of households, MSMEs, clinics, schools and nursing homes, creating new domestic jobs for Cuban technicians and companies. Major incentives will be offered for electric transportation powered by renewables, with expedited licensing for electric taxis and mobility services, prioritizing investment in tourist hubs, urban centers and productive zones.

To address the gap between stagnant incomes and rising living costs, Díaz-Canel announced an end to broad, ineffective blanket price caps, which have repeatedly led to shortages and expanded black markets. Instead, the government will shift from product subsidies to direct, targeted support for vulnerable populations, guaranteeing the basic food basket for retirees, families with chronically ill children and low-income households. The country will move progressively to a creditable value-added tax system paired with universal electronic invoicing to eliminate cascading taxation and reduce tax evasion, while the banking system will be thoroughly modernized to reduce bureaucracy, open space for regulated private and foreign financial participation, and streamline transactions ranging from pension payments to remittances to business investment.

Digital transformation and artificial intelligence will be deployed as cross-cutting tools to boost productivity across every sector, from agriculture to healthcare to tax administration. In the tourism and real estate sectors, new flexible business models will open idle state-owned properties to leasing and development by state, private, cooperative and mixed entities. Wage barriers that push skilled talent out of strategic sectors will be eliminated, allowing variable performance-based pay in both local and foreign currency tied to measurable results.

Díaz-Canel stressed that all reforms will be implemented gradually, with pilot testing, continuous adjustment, and clear accountability: every measure will have a designated leader, a fixed deadline, and public performance metrics. Decisions that work will be scaled up; those that fail will be corrected immediately; officials unable to meet the demands of the moment will step aside for those who can deliver results.

Beyond economic reform, Díaz-Canel announced new initiatives to empower young Cubans, launching a national Community Youth Network that will give young people skills, resources and real opportunities to launch projects, revitalize their neighborhoods, create local jobs and build futures in Cuba rather than leaving to seek opportunity abroad.

Addressing the Cuban people directly, he emphasized that resistance alone is no longer enough: decades of blockade have caused immense suffering, but the country must also address internal barriers including bureaucracy, sluggishness and delayed decisions. “To govern is to solve problems, remove obstacles, provide support, and ensure that decisions translate into real improvements,” he said. “What we intend to set in motion is an emergency economic and social agenda… some will not enjoy unanimous consensus, but they cannot be postponed.”

Díaz-Canel closed by tying the reform effort to Cuba’s centuries-long struggle for sovereignty, invoking the legacy of Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro and all the revolutionary heroes who led the nation through past crises. On the centennial of Fidel Castro’s birth, he said, the greatest tribute to the revolution’s founders is to preserve its core commitment to social justice while adapting to meet the challenges of the present. “Nothing will be impossible if we embrace the challenge as an opportunity and history as inspiration,” he said. “We are all called to action, and together we will prevail.”

The address concluded with resounding cheers for a free, sovereign Cuba, and the iconic revolutionary rallying cry: “Socialism or Death! Fatherland or Death! We will prevail!”

In a public statement delivered to India-based independent YouTube news channel Left Views, Sitaram Yechury, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] — referred to as Baby in the original report — has sounded a global alarm over a rising pattern of geopolitical aggression led by the United States’ combined military-industrial and media establishment during the Donald Trump administration, a threat that he says has hit Cuba particularly hard among all nations. Baby highlighted that the threat to Cuba is not just rhetorical, drawing specific attention to a little-noted past threat made by former President Trump, who publicly stated he would move to take control of Cuba once the US resolved its diplomatic and military standoff with Iran. Beyond direct threats, he added, the Trump administration went to great lengths to manufacture justifications for an illegal military strike on the Caribbean island nation. One key example he cited was Washington’s unfair and misleading rehash of a decades-old incident: accusing former Cuban leader Raul Castro, a central figure in the Cuban Revolution, of wrongdoing for a 1990s action that was entirely a legitimate exercise of Cuban national sovereignty. The CPI(M) chief stressed that no country, particularly a global superpower like the United States, has any legal or moral standing to ignore or breach international law for its own geopolitical gain. Turning to India’s role, Baby called on the Indian government in New Delhi to take urgent diplomatic action in solidarity with Cuba, pointing out the long-standing friendly ties between New Delhi and Havana, as well as Cuba’s membership in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a bloc that India has long been a leading member of. To build global pressure against US aggression, Baby called for coordinated collective action across the international community, saying: “We must all organize our firm solidarity with the people, government, and Communist Party of Cuba (PCC).”

Cuba’s highest Communist Party leadership body has formally confirmed plans to convene a special, one-day gathering of its Central Committee this Wednesday, June 17, 2026, focused exclusively on assessing sweeping proposals for national economic and social transformation.

The announcement was made public one day in advance of the plenum, on June 16, by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), via official state media outlet Granma. The decision to call the extraordinary session was previously approved by the PCC Political Bureau, according to confirmation from Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez — who holds dual roles as First Secretary of the PCC Central Committee and President of the Republic of Cuba — in recent comments to press outlets.

Extraordinary plenary sessions of the Communist Party Central Committee are reserved for high-stakes, time-sensitive policy discussions that fall outside the scope of regularly scheduled annual gatherings. This upcoming session centers on proposals that aim to reshape Cuba’s economic and social frameworks, a topic of ongoing national debate amid the country’s continued efforts to address longstanding economic challenges, external pressure, and evolving domestic development needs.

As of Tuesday, no additional details have been released regarding the full scope of the transformation proposals up for discussion, or expected voting outcomes following the plenum’s deliberations.