12/21/13, "Raul Castro issues stern warning to entrepreneurs," AP
"President Raul Castro
issued a stern warning to entrepreneurs pushing the boundaries of Cuba's
economic reform, telling parliament on Saturday that "those pressuring
us to move faster are moving us toward failure."
.
.
Castro
has legalized small-scale, private businesses in nearly 200 fields
since 2010, but has issued tighter regulations on businesses seen as
going too far or competing excessively with state
enterprises. In recent months, the government has banned the resale of
imported hardware and clothing and cracked down on unlicensed private
videogame and movie salons.
Castro threw his
full weight behind such measures in an address to the biannual meeting
of the communist legislature, saying "every step we take must be
accompanied by the establishment of a sense of order."...
He told lawmakers that Cuba wants better
relations with the U.S. but will never give in to demands for changes
to Cuba's government and economy, saying "we don't demand that the U.S.
change its political or social system and we don't accept negotiations
over ours."
"If we really want to move our
bilateral relations forward, we'll have to learn to respect our
differences," Castro said. "If not, we're ready to take another 55 years
in the same situation."
Cuba blames a
half-century-old U.S. embargo for strangling its economy but Castro's
government has also acknowledged that it must reform the state-run
economy with a gradual opening to private enterprise. Many Cubans have
enthusiastically seized opportunities to make more money with their own
businesses, but new entrepreneurs and outside experts alike complain
that the government has been sending mixed messages about its openness
to private enterprise.
The conflicting signals
were apparent in Cuba's handling of the dozens of private home cinemas
and video game salons that sprung up around the country this year,
drawing crowds of young people willing to spend a few dollars for access
to the latest home entertainment technology imported, purportedly for
private use, by Cubans returning from the U.S., Canada or other
countries.
The government denounced the
cinemas as spreading uncultured drivel to the young, and ordered them
closed last month for stretching the boundaries on the kinds of private
businesses allowed under reforms instituted by Castro. Then came the
backlash, with entrepreneurs bemoaning thousands of dollars in lost
investment and moviegoers saying they were exasperated by
heavy-handedness toward a harmless diversion. The official reaction was
swift, and unprecedented.
An article in the
Communist Party newspaper Granma on last month acknowledged there was
wide disapproval of the ban, and hinted it was being rethought. The same
Granma article also offered a full-throated defense of the ban on the
reselling of imported hardware and clothes.
Castro appeared to justify all of the recent moves to clamp down on private enterprise....
Castro praised the
Cold War ties between Cuba and South Africa's anti-apartheid movement
but did not mention his handshake with President Barack Obama at Nelson
Mandela's funeral this month. He lamented that
growth would come in at 2.7 percent for 2013, nearly a full percentage
below the predicted 3.6 percent. He said growth for 2014 was expected to
be 2.2 percent.
It is nearly impossible to
know on the true size of Cuba's economy because Cuba uses two
currencies, a convertible peso for tourists that's pegged to the U.S.
dollar and a Cuban peso worth about 4 cents, and the government doesn't
clearly distinguish between them in economic statistics." via Free Republic
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