Cuba has announced it will allow private businesses to operate in most industries, in what is a major reform to its state-controlled economy.
Labour Minister Marta Elena Feito said the list of authorised industries had expanded from 127 to more than 2,000.
Only a minority of industries would be reserved for the state, she said.
She said there would be 124 exceptions, but the media reports provided no details.
Reform-minded Cuban economists have long called for the role of small business to be expanded to help jump-start the economy and to create jobs.
The economy has stagnated for years and contracted by 11% last year, due to a combination of the coronavirus pandemic that devastated tourism and tough U.S. sanctions. Cubans have been dealing with a scarcity of basic goods and endless lines to obtain them.
The crisis has forced a series of long promised but stalled reforms, from devaluation of the peso and reorganization of the monetary system to some deregulation of state businesses and foreign investment.
“The self-employed are not going to have it easy in this new beginning due to the complex environment in which they will operate, with few dollars and inputs in the economy,” said Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank economist who teaches at Colombia’s Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali.
“But with the ingenuity of the Cuban and the sophistication of the parallel market, they will be able to take off little by little,” he added.
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba is a country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean meet.
