Cuba creates more than 5,000 private companies in one year

Cuba’s Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP) on Thursday approved 93 applications for the creation of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, reaching more than 5,000 private organizations since the regulations allowing this came into force a year ago.

“The MEP today approved 93 applications for the creation of micro, small and medium private companies. With this decision, there are now 5258 economic actors approved since the process began in September 2021,” the Cuban government detailed in a message on Twitter.

Of the total number of companies, 5149 are private MSMEs, 51 state MSMEs and the other 58 non-agricultural cooperatives. Fifty-two percent of them are reconversions of pre-existing businesses and 48 percent correspond to new ventures.

One year after the entry into force of the legal norms that included the end of the experiment of non-agricultural cooperatives and that allowed the creation of private enterprises for the first time since 1968, Cuba already has more than 5,000 of these MSMEs, according to data from the Executive.

The Cuban government defines these enterprises as “economic units with legal personality, which have their own dimensions and characteristics, and whose objective is to develop the production of goods and the provision of services that satisfy the needs of society.”

It also establishes that MSMEs may be state-owned, private or mixed. The small ones may have a maximum of ten members, the small ones, 35, and the large ones, up to 100 people.

The companies will also be authorized to export and import in accordance with the provisions of the legislation in force and to fix the prices of their services and goods, except those of centralized approval.

The measures were framed in the context of the growing economic crisis in the Caribbean country, which experienced an 11 percent contraction of GDP in 2020 as a result of the pandemic.