Cuba private sector expansion bars independent journalists, engineers and these other jobs

A much-anticipated expansion of the private sector in Cuba will not include a wide range of professional services, wholesale trade or major industries like sugar and tobacco and prohibits the creation of media outlets, according to a list of banned activities published Wednesday.

The government will not allow competition with the state in vital sectors such as healthcare, education, and communications, according to the document published by the official website Cubadebate. Doctors, architects and engineers will still not be permitted to open private businesses. What is allowed: vets for family pets, coders and music teachers, among other activities.

The list comes days after Cuba’s government announced it would increase the number of business fields where self-employment is allowed from 127 to more than 2,000, a move that generated high expectations that the state-controlled economy was moving toward a major opening.

The expansion of self-employment and small private businesses had been planned since last year as part of a series of reforms to confront the island’s economic crisis. Cuba’s GDP contracted 11% as the coronavirus pandemic, Trump administration sanctions, and the crisis in Venezuela exacerbated the problems of Cuba’s long-beleaguered state economy. The measure also seeks to create jobs for about 300,000 state workers that authorities estimate could be left unemployed when the government stops subsidizing inefficient companies.

While praised as an important step, economists noted that the expansion’s impact would be limited if small and medium-sized private companies are still not authorized. A law to give these companies legal status was postponed until 2022.

“As positive as this new measure by the Cuban government to expand the list of authorized activities for the self-employed sector may seem, it is still an incomplete measure if it is not accompanied by the legalization of small and medium enterprises in Cuba,” said Havana entrepreneur Camilo Condis, adding that their approval is “essential for the recovery and progress of the Cuban economy.”

According to the list of 124 barred activities, the government will maintain control of most sectors of the economy. Authorities also prohibit activities until now tolerated, such as creating independent media outlets. Though not formally outlawed under Cuban law, journalists who do not work for state agencies have been subject to routine harassment. Printing, editing and laying out books, newspapers and magazines are barred.

Working as a journalist outside state media was already restricted by other government decrees limiting freedom of expression, said Luz Escobar, a reporter with the independent news website 14ymedio. She has routinely faced pressure from the government, like state security agents not allowing her to leave her home.

“Now we are once again denied the possibility of working legally and paying taxes for what we do,” she said.

Escobar noted that other categories related to free expression are also prohibited — including creating unions, professional associations or running an art gallery.

“All of this happens when artists and the civil society have been putting pressure on the government,” she said, referring to several protests by artists and other activists calling for more freedoms on the island. The prohibitions “are a message from those in power that they will not allow any independent gesture, even on a symbolic level.”

The Minister of Labor and Social Security, Marta Elena Feitó, said Tuesday that the current list of 127 authorized activities would be eliminated because it was very restrictive. Those who wish to open small businesses will be allowed to present a project related to the more than 2,000 activities listed in the so-called National Classifier of Economic Activities, an official list of all job categories in the country.

The list includes 80 sectors of the economy that are divided into smaller categories. The agricultural field, for example, is split into various types of crops. That piecemeal approach could explain the high number of allowed activities. The list includes everything from manufacturing cars, which is not allowed under the new rules, to teaching a foreign language, which is. How many of those categories end up on the final approval list remains unclear.

Among the professional activities that will be authorized are software programming and veterinary medicine, but only for the care of family pets, two long-running demands by Cubans on the island. The government had initially allowed software engineers to be self-employed but later suspended new licenses. Many programmers have offered their services to companies abroad but without any legal backing.

“Now more computing engineers will be able to join development projects without the need to work illegally or be forced to taking jobs outside their professional fields,” said programmer Luis Garcés. “This will speed up the computerization of a society that came last to the internet.”

The authorization of small veterinary businesses, announced on Tuesday by Economy Minister Alejandro Gil, comes after pressure from animal rights activists, who protested a recent decree that banned these services.

Economist Carmelo Mesa Lago said that the expansion of self-employment was “a positive step” that many had been advocating for over the years but he cautioned it still remains to be seen what the final regulations say.

“The devil is in the details,” he said, recalling how the government announced last year that self-employed workers could export and import products, only for authorities to later say it could only be done through state enterprises.

Some decisions are difficult, he added: “If you allow architects to practice privately, they will leave the state sector.”

Feitó said self-employed workers will be able to have more than one business. All currently self-employed workers will have to re-register, she said, and those seeking to open new businesses will have to submit their projects for authorization.

“A country and an economy do not fit into one regulation,” said the minister, in reference to the narrow list of 127 authorized activities. Among the changes, she mentioned that those who rent rooms to tourists can now add other services like providing meals and transportation without requiring multiple licenses. Bed and breakfasts are still authorized in the tourism sector, though the creation of travel agencies will not be allowed. Most of those companies are controlled by the military.

Readers of Cubadebate left hundreds of comments criticizing the prohibitions and asking authorities to explain what is allowed and what is not more clearly.

Despite an initial push to reform the economy during Raúl Castro’s government, authorities have pushed back on the expansion of self-employment, limiting it to 127 activities that excluded most of the professional services. Some of the allowed activities, such as “button liner” or “palm trimmer,” exemplified how limited the focus was.

Even so, thousands of Cubans opened small authorized businesses in their homes: cafes, hostels, “paladares” or restaurants, and beauty parlors. Others left their state jobs to become taxi drivers. The most successful could generate thousands of dollars. For most, the nascent private sector allowed them to survive outside the state economy.

According to government figures, more than 600,000 Cubans are owners or employees in these small businesses.

Although the expansion of authorized private sector activities was a measure that many Cubans have advocated for inside and outside the country, experts believe that it will not be enough to improve the island’s economy, which is also experiencing the impact of a monetary reform that has generated inflation.

The development of wholesale trade, the elimination of bureaucratic hurdles, and the granting of loans are other measures that, together with the law recognizing private companies, must be taken “quickly, without obstacles or disincentives,” wrote Mesa Lago in a recent report for the Elcano Royal Institute think tank in Spain.

Other experts doubt that the announcement will have an immediate effect on a sector that has been heavily affected by U.S. sanctions and restrictive measures imposed to combat the pandemic. In the announcement, some see a nod to the Joe Biden administration, which has promised to review policy toward Cuba and roll back limitations on travel and remittances.

The new U.S. administration could look favorably upon Cuban government efforts to complete the monetary unification that began this year and promote “energizing opportunities for small businesses to operate independently,” said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

“If the Biden administration believes the [Miguel] Díaz-Canel government is prepared to do what is difficult, maintain the processes despite challenges, then it is far easier for Washington to create opportunities for engagement,” he said.

Follow Nora Gámez Torres on Twitter: @ngameztorres