Cuban reshuffle looks for military-style efficiency
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| Published on Friday, March 6, 2009 |
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By Marc Frank
HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters): Cuban President Raul Castro's biggest cabinet shake-up since he assumed power appears aimed at injecting more military-style efficiency into an economy battered by hurricanes and recession and hamstrung by bureaucracy.
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Cuban President Raul Castro
AFP PHOTO |
His appointments do not seem to herald any radical reforms. They bring in generals, former officers and middle-aged cadres and appear targeted at streamlining and improving Cuba's Communist state system and economic model.
Capping off a series of government changes since he took over from his ailing elder brother Fidel Castro in February, 2008, Raul Castro this week fired 10 members of the Council of Ministers, and merged four economic ministries into two.
Cuba experts said the appointments by Raul Castro -- widely viewed as a pragmatist -- were in line with a military reform model called "perfeccionamiento empresarial" -- a Spanish term which translates as "perfecting the (state) company system" and indicates an underlying support for that system.
The model was developed for companies supplying the armed forces when Raul Castro was defense minister and he has said he wants all of Cuba's 3,000 state companies to adopt it.
"Raul is making good on his promise to streamline government administration, making it more efficient and less corrupt," said Brian Latell, a former CIA analyst who has watched Cuba for decades.
Cuba's economy, long afflicted by bureaucratic inertia and disorganization, has been badly battered by three hurricanes last year, wild spikes in commodity prices and the global financial crisis. It grew 4 percent during Raul Castro's first year in office, but the trade deficit soared a startling 70 percent on a 43 percent increase in imports.
The balance of payments that measures the flow of foreign exchange in and out of the country went from a $500 million surplus to more than a $2 billion deficit, according to various estimates, leaving the country little choice but to negotiate new payment terms with foreign creditors and businesses.
Only a freeze on the exchange rate avoided further deterioration in the peso's value as domestic production made little progress, the budget deficit jumped 121 percent and pesos in the hands of the population increased 21 percent.
Raul Castro's appointments put more of the economy in the hands of military officers, whom he appears to trust more to instill greater efficiency and deliver concrete results.
The new secretary of the council of ministers is his former defense ministry chief of staff, General Jose Amado Ricardo Guerra, while the new economy and planning minister is ex-military officer turned bureaucrat Marino Alberto Murillo.
The new head of the steel and mechanical industry ministry is General Salvador Pardo Cruz, who ran the military companies that supply the armed forces.
The "perfeccionamiento empresarial" model seeks to incorporate modern management and accounting practices and grant local managers more day-to-day decision-making power. It also ties wages to individual and collective performance.
"'Perfeccionamiento empresarial' has no exact analogy in capitalist economies and is not borrowed from other socialist countries' models of reform," Cuba expert Phil Peters at the Lexington Institute in Virginia wrote recently in a study.
Under it, there is some room for partnering with foreign companies and for competition between state firms, and for limited private initiative in agriculture and other areas on the fringes of the retail sector.
Since taking office last year, Raul Castro has taken small, but symbolic steps such as lifting restrictions on some consumer goods for ordinary Cubans and allowing them to enter tourist hotels previously reserved for foreign visitors.
His major economic reforms have been in agriculture where decision making was decentralized and producers granted more autonomy and land. He also lifted income caps, declaring workers and farmers should earn all they can through their efforts. | | | | Reads : 646 | | | |
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