Roundup: Cuba advances free-market experiments with caution

Cuban President Raul Castro has urged his cabinet to scrutinize the results of the country's limited free-market reforms to ensure it is on the right path, state daily Granma reported Monday.

"We have the duty to consider and foresee the consequences of every step we take," Castro said at a meeting Friday of the Council of Ministers, the island nation's governing body, to review the state of the economy.

Castro noted the reforms are new to Cuba's socialist model, whereby the government used to control all production and services. "Experience in these tasks does not always exist; that is why what we do must be constantly subjected to constructive criticism."

Castro's comments came before the council was set to discuss Cuba's so-called non-agricultural cooperatives, or experimental quasi-private enterprises launched merely a year and seven months ago, according to Granma.

"The cooperatives are of an experimental character and although their implementation is advancing, we have no reason to speed up the pace, we must move at the pace dictated by events," said Castro.

Marino Murillo, head of the Implementation and Development Permanent Commission, reported the cooperatives have had both " positive and negative aspects."

Some 498 types of cooperatives have been given the green light in Cuba, and 347 are already operating, most being in three areas - - commerce, restaurants and technical-personal services (59 percent); construction (19 percent); and industry (10 percent). More than 70 percent are located in Havana, Artemisa and Matanzas, said the newspaper.

Murillo, whose commission is currently evaluating another 205 types of cooperatives, said the enterprises "serve segments of the market in which state enterprises are not competitive."

They also create jobs, and improve the quality of products and services, and extend the hours they are available.

In general, they "have performed well productively, economically and financially, while increasing income for associates as a result of earnings," Granma said.

As of the end of November, 2014, a total of 268 cooperatives had contributed 87.7 million pesos (3.3 million U.S. dollars) in taxes on sales and income, as well as social security, the daily added.

However, Murillo said, "not everyone correctly understands the experimental nature of the process, or the priority given to its implementation in sectors that have a significant impact on the development of the region."

The process of establishing a cooperative is also bogged down by paperwork, he said.

"The start of operations has been slow, fundamentally because of the process of selecting locales, their legalization in property registers, and the creation of conditions for their operation; the process of negotiation between cooperatives and the bodies responsible for approval; and the legal paperwork involving notaries and banking institutions," he said.

Cooperatives may also find it difficult to access supplies, therefore, the prices of products and services they are offering tend to rise, especially at produce markets and restaurants.

The Council of Ministers, said Granma, agreed "to extend the experiment," but limit the creation of new cooperatives so as to consolidate existing ones. They also introduced certain measures to protect employees working in Cuba's budding private sector. Endite