From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Small Businesses Become a Lifeline for Cuba’s Floundering Economy   
   By Deborah Acosta and José de Córdoba, Oct. 4, 2023, WSJ   
   MIAMI—Newly licensed private businesses are becoming a lifeline for Cuba,   
   bringing in about half of the country’s total food imports as the   
   cash-strapped Communist government struggles to keep power plants running and   
   provide public transport because    
   of acute fuel shortages.   
      
   Havana passed laws allowing Cubans to form small businesses that can employ up   
   to 100 people in the wake of countrywide protests that shook the impoverished   
   island two years ago. Since then, more than 8,000 small and midsize businesses   
   have registered    
   with the government. They are involved in activities that range from tourism   
   and construction to computer programming.   
      
   These businesses are now leading importers in a country that relies on imports   
   of everything from fuel to most of its food. Cuba’s economy minister,   
   Alejandro Gil Fernández, said in a report to Cuba’s Congress on the state   
   of the economy that    
   imports by private companies could top $1 billion this year. They are on track   
   to provide more than half of Cuba’s food imports, said Pavel Vidal, a Cuban   
   economist at the Universidad Javeriana in Cali, Colombia.   
      
   â€œIn the last two years, the private sector has been dominating commerce in   
   Cuba to an unprecedented level,â€� Aldo Ã�lvarez, a Cuban lawyer turned   
   importer based in Havana, said in a telephone interview. “We not only have   
   businesses, but we have the    
   capacity to import.â€�   
      
   Allowing small businesses to operate is a dramatic step for the conservative   
   Communist government. Havana has allowed individuals to be self-employed in a   
   limited but growing number of occupations—which ranged from “clownâ€� to   
   â€œknife sharpenerâ€�†  
   ”since the 1990s. The new policy expands the size and kinds of businesses   
   Cubans can operate.   
      
   Last week, more than 70 Cuban entrepreneurs met in Miami with U.S. officials,   
   leading Cuban-American businessmen and potential suppliers in a bid to boost   
   the island’s private sector and understand how to navigate rules to trade   
   with the U.S.   
      
   Cuba’s embassy to the U.S. referred to comments in a recent radio interview   
   with Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío, who said Havana’s   
   decision to allow small businesses was a sovereign decision but that Cuba   
   wouldn’t allow big    
   concentrations of property, wealth and capital to develop, “at least for the   
   moment.â€� He told Miami public radio station WLRN last week that economic   
   liberalization won’t lead to a political challenge of Cuba’s single-party   
   rule.   
      
   â€œWe are not aiming at that,â€� he said.   
      
   A U.S. State Department spokesman said the Biden administration “is   
   committed to supporting Cuba’s independent private sector in ways that   
   maximize benefit to the Cuban people while minimizing benefit to the Cuban   
   government.â€�   
      
   More than 400,000 Cubans have left the island for the U.S. over the past two   
   years, according to data by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The emigration   
   wave has been fueled by political repression and severe electricity, fuel and   
   food shortages,    
   migrants say, in the worst economic crisis since the dissolution of the Soviet   
   Union, Cuba’s main ally and trade partner, in the 1990s. Tourism, the   
   island’s main moneymaker, collapsed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and   
   has yet to fully recover.   
      
   Most of the damaging economic and financial sanctions imposed by the Trump   
   administration remain in place. High inflation plagues the economy, while food   
   and medicine are hard to find, say residents of Cuba and their relatives   
   abroad. Days ago, Gil Ferná   
   ndez, the nation’s economy minister, warned Cubans to prepare for more   
   prolonged blackouts and fuel shortages that will severely restrict public and   
   private transport.   
      
   Most Cubans who have government jobs or pensions make the equivalent of $20 a   
   month or less and stand in line for hours to get government-provided rations   
   that are often scarce and late in arriving.   
      
   The new small businesses offer a bright spot for about one-third of the   
   population, economists say. These Cubans have access to foreign currency from   
   remittances sent by relatives abroad, work in tourism or in the new private   
   businesses that pay much    
   higher wages than state companies.   
      
   Much of Havana is crumbling, but in some neighborhoods the change brought by   
   the businesses is palpable. Privately owned restaurants, bakeries, beauty   
   salons and even gyms dot streets where before there were none.   
      
   â€œNow there are little grocery stores every other block selling inexpensive   
   things, food products,â€� says former U.S. Congressman Joe García, who helps   
   connect Cuban small-business owners with suppliers. “People complain that   
   they’re expensive,    
   but before there was nothing.â€�   
      
   Ã�lvarez brings in about nine containers full of products such as chicken,   
   flour and cleaning goods every month. He said he wants to increase the number   
   of containers filled with imports to 15 a month.   
      
   With a staff of 60, Ã�lvarez keeps his products in a warehouse he rents from   
   an idle Cuban state company and distributes them to private restaurants and   
   grocery stores throughout the island.   
      
   For many of the businesses, finance is the biggest obstacle. Because of the   
   U.S. trade embargo, Cubans can’t transfer funds from the island to U.S. bank   
   accounts, complicating import payments. Some Cuban business people travel out   
   of the island with    
   pockets full of cash. Many say they stuff their clothes, suitcases and pockets   
   and hope the authorities don’t check.   
      
   To avoid the complication of physically moving hard currency out of the   
   island, many business owners engage in informal currency swaps, often through   
   foreign travel agencies, which connect with Cuban importers on the island and   
   agree to pay off their    
   suppliers abroad. In exchange, their tourist groups receive the equivalent in   
   Cuban pesos when they arrive on the island.   
      
   â€œThe Cuban pesos often don’t leave Cuba. They just change hands outside   
   the rails of the system,â€� said Matt Aho, a Cuban expert at Akerman, a law   
   firm whose Miami office hosted the event.   
      
   New U.S. regulations that would allow Cuban entrepreneurs to use bank accounts   
   in the U.S. to facilitate trade for Cuban small businesses have been under   
   discussion for months, U.S. officials say.   
      
      
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