Cuba’s fiscal deficit surged in 2008 reflecting climatic disturbances, the world recession, and a burst of government expenditure (see table below). Since then the deficit has been substantially reduced owing partly to a shift toward domestic expenditure restraint under Raúl Castro’s administration, and in spite of a drop in external financing. Those are the good […]
A Triumph of Intelligence: Cuba Moves towards Exchange Rate Unification
The “Official Note” was written in a characteristically defensive style, with stern warnings that the strategy will exclude the use of “shock therapies”. But never mind. The important message was clear: Cuba is going to implement “a timeline for measures which will lead to monetary and currency exchange unification.” The inefficient, absurd and discriminatory multiple […]
Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Venezuela: A Tale of Dependence and Shock
Notes1 Recently there have been several estimates of Venezuelan economic assistance to Cuba — for example by Lopez (2012) and Mesa-Lago (2013). My latest estimates suggest that payments from Venezuela increased rapidly during the first decade of the XXI century and peaked at almost 19% of Cuba’s GDP in 2009. They declined over the following […]
Another Cuban Statistical Mystery
Official Cuban statistics are full of mysteries, and this is particularly the case in the area of the balance of payments. Even though data on trade in goods and services is available through 2011, data on other current account transactions (grants, remittances and interest payments abroad) have not been published since 2009. Data on capital […]
Government Support to Enterprises in Cuba
Cuba has a long history of State support to enterprises. As indicated in Table1, total state subsidies and transfers to enterprises exploded in the early 1990s, following the elimination of Soviet economic assistance, reaching a peak of almost one third of GDP in 1992. From then on, state support then declined steadily to a trough […]
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