Weekly Report - 30 June 2011 (WR-11-26)

Almost all eyes on Cuba at the moment are fixed on news about the wellbeing of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez. But Chávez is not the only ailing patient in Cuba. Indeed, his illness, and the secrecy surrounding it, is analogous to the parlous state of Cuba's economy, and the lack of transparency surrounding measures to revitalise it. It is two months since the Communist Party congress but President Raúl Castro has taken no giant strides towards implementing his decidedly non-Marxist policy doctrine (‘Guidelines of economic and social policy') presented at the congress. For one thing, the streamlining of the "bloated" state sector, and increase in the size of a tax-paying private sector, has been slowed down to prevent potentially serious social dislocation.

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