Development: On 8 July the minister for transport, Jorge Luis Sierra, announced on Radio Rebelde, an official radio station, that Raúl Castro's government will allow taxi drivers to apply for licences for the first time since October 1999.

Significance: This is the latest in a series of economic and social reforms which Raúl Castro has implemented since he adopted full presidential powers on 24 February this year. Although it may be good news for taxi drivers, most of whom have been forced to operate illegally since new licence applications were suspended in 1999, in effect this is not going to improve freedom of movement for Cubans, who will not be able to choose the route of the taxi.

Sierra said the new approved taxi routes will be granted mainly in rural areas to fill in the gaps in the service offered by local bus services. "We will give [the taxi driver] the fuel, fix the tariff to be charged, and fix the route and schedule. It is as if it were a public bus for the rural areas," he said. Licences will be granted to taxi drivers in urban areas only for routes not currently covered by existing bus routes, according to sources from the transport ministry.

It remains to be seen whether this latest reform will do anything to improve the quality of service received by Cubans on the ground, however. The government has been developing an investment plan of US$2bn over the past two years to improve the disastrous state of the country's public transport service, hard hit by the "Special Period" of the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union.