Cuban Government Reintroduces Stale Wage Policy as "New Measure" While Doctors and Teachers Remain Neglected

Recently, the Cuban government reintroduced the Agreement 10199/2025 as a "new decision by the Council of Ministers," despite it being officially published six months prior in the Extraordinary Official Gazette No. 45 on August 11, 2025.

This policy, which allows state entities to reallocate unspent wage funds as labor incentives, was reshared this week by state journalist Lázaro Manuel Alonso on social media. He presented it as a recent approval, causing confusion and highlighting the regime's propaganda tactics to feign economic dynamism amidst bureaucratic recycling.

In reality, the document doesn't introduce any novel measures; it merely formalizes a temporary mechanism for "additional payments" using leftover salary funds within budgeted units such as ministries, schools, hospitals, administrative offices, or cultural centers, supposedly to "curb labor instability."

Essentially, the state isn't injecting more money or increasing wages. Instead, it permits the distribution of leftover funds among a few when there are staff shortages.

Old Law Pitched as New

The temporal contradiction is clear. Agreement 10199 was approved on August 2, 2025, and published in the Official Gazette nine days later, yet it received no coverage in Cuban media. Outlets like Granma, Cubadebate, and the Cuban News Agency remained silent.

Unexpectedly, the Club Argentino de Periodistas Amigos de Cuba (CAPAC), a pro-socialist media outlet based in Buenos Aires, was the first to publish the full text on August 21, 2025, citing sources from the Gazette and TeleSur.

It's notable that a foreign outlet was the first to publicize an internal policy affecting labor within Cuba, while official channels stayed silent. Only now, in January 2026, as attempts to implement the mechanism in ministries and local governments begin, does Cuban television "resurrect" the agreement, portraying it as a "new decision" by the Council of Ministers.

This shift in tone isn't due to confusion; it's part of a planned communication effort to project governmental action to a populace increasingly desperate from lost purchasing power.

Understanding Agreement 10199

The agreement permits state entities to utilize unspent wage funds—due to vacancies, unpaid leaves, subsidies, or maternity leaves—to pay bonuses or additional incentives to active workers. These payments are considered wages "for all legal purposes," though they aren't a permanent system nor can they be broadly applied.

Each institution must approve internal regulations, involving the union, to determine: (1) performance or responsibility criteria, (2) redistributable amounts, and (3) the frequency (one-time or temporary).

This redistribution must be selective, based on merit or workload, and backed by verified savings from the salary fund. The agreement explicitly excludes the health and education sectors, claiming these professionals already receive special benefits for "maximum effort" and "educational overload," stemming from wage measures announced in January 2024 on the Mesa Redonda TV program.

However, those measures, also partial, were overtaken by inflation within six months and now have no real impact on the purchasing power of doctors and teachers.

Nominal Increases vs. Real Inflation

According to official data from Mesa Redonda, wage increases for health and education ranged from 10% to 25% nominally, depending on the position. A general practitioner saw their salary rise from about 5,000 CUP to around 6,200 CUP monthly, while an average teacher's salary increased slightly from 4,100 to 4,700 CUP.

However, during the same period, the annual inflation rate in Cuba exceeded 200%, with the informal dollar rate jumping from 250 to nearly 490 CUP between January 2024 and January 2026.

This means a doctor's or teacher's salary today is worth less than a third of its value two years ago. Even those workers eligible for incentives under Agreement 10199—ranging from an additional 500 to 1,000 CUP monthly—would still lose over 60% of their real purchasing power.

The Illusion of Wage Increases

Estimated basic basket cost (January 2026, two people): 25,000–27,000 CUP/month

Average state salary: 5,400 CUP

Basic basket coverage: *barely 20–22% of living costs.

In summary, neither the January 2024 wage increases for health and education nor the temporary bonuses from Agreement 10199/2025 for the rest of the state sector correct the collapse of purchasing power.

Both mechanisms are nominal and temporary, while the deterioration of the national currency progresses faster than any wage adjustment.

Doctors and Teachers: The Overlooked Pillars

The exclusion of doctors and teachers from the new incentive isn't technical but political. The regime needs to show quick results in public administration areas where employee attrition has caused service collapse, while the health and education sectors are used as propaganda symbols of "revolutionary humanism."

Yet, it's precisely these workers who sustain the country under the most precarious conditions.

A Cuban doctor continues to earn the equivalent of $12 monthly, a teacher just over $10, while the government spends billions subsidizing military enterprises or external propaganda.

Agreement 10199 solidifies this inequality: rewarding bureaucrats and administrators, while excluding those who truly uphold the public system.

An Exhausted Economy, a Stale Policy

Ultimately, the reappearance of Agreement 10199/2025 isn't a scheduling error but a demonstration of the exhaustion of the Cuban economic model. The state lacks resources to increase real wages, thus repeating the same decrees under different guises, recycling salary fund savings as if they were a new achievement.

But the reality is undeniable: with inflation eroding any increase and a continually depreciating peso, no incentive can stop labor desertion or mass migration.

In conclusion, the Cuban regime attempts to tout an old agreement as a "new achievement" that neither raises real wages nor improves workers' lives. Doctors and teachers, once again excluded, remain the most visible face of institutional disregard for those sustaining the public system's pillars.

The media revival of a dead policy from six months ago isn't an economic measure: it's a symptom of the power and idea vacuum at the core of the Cuban model.