• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 11 / 21 / 2010

---

12:29, November 21, 2010.The Cuban legislature will convene a plenary session on Dec. 15 to gauge the measures under a state project to "update" the country's economic model, which has triggered a national debate in the Caribbean island country.

The decision for convening such a session was announced at a meeting of the Cuban People's Power National Assembly on
Saturday.

The plenary session will provide the framework of the agenda for the ruling Cuban Communist Party's sixth congress to be
held in April 2011.

The project to "update" the socialist economic model has been stressed by Cuban leader Raul Castro repeatedly since earlier this year.

At a meeting of the legislature on August 1, he announced the expansion of the self-employment and the progressive reduction of the bloated state sectors as two milestones of the economic reform.

Other key elements of the reform includes the layoff of half a million employees of state-owned companies, elimination of excessive social benefits, a more flexible housing market and the implementation of a new tax system.

The layoff plan, underway from October through March 2011, will increase the efficiency and productivity of the 5-million-strong workforce in the country which has a total population of 11.2 millions, according to Cuban authorities.

As a way to settle the half-a-million laid-off workers, the government has expanded "self-employment opportunities" to 178 categories, including coffee shops, repair shops, shoe shops, hairdressers and taxis.

The new "self employeers" must pay taxes on personal income, sales and the hired labor. Also for the first time since the Cuban revolution, the income of workers in the state enterprises will depend on the productive results.

The reform also encourages foreign investment and the study of the unification of the two currencies used in the country, the Cuban national peso (CUP) and the Convertible peso (CUC).

Raul Castro has repeatedly underscored the need for reform, which he said will increase efficiency and productivity of the Cuban economy and help the country overcome the decades-old economic difficulties.

Otherwise, he warned, "we will sink into the abyss."

Meanwhile, he pledged to carry out the reform without copying foreign patterns, saying the new economic model will be "an
autochthonous product, tailored to our characteristic" and "without resigning to the construction of socialism."

"The policy we are proposing is that socialism means equal rights and equal opportunities for all citizens, but not egalitarianism," Raul Castro said.

On Oct. 31, he attended a plenary meeting of the Cuban Workers Central Union, where he urged union leaders to explain to the workers the need for reform.

To defend and to explain the reform measures, he said, the working class must have total knowledge of them and be convinced of their importance for the survival of the revolution.

Source: Xinhua