Economist Criticizes Pension Payment Plan, Warns of Cash Shortages for Small Businesses

Economist Elías Amor has raised alarms about a proposal from the Central Bank of Cuba that pressures small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to advance cash payments for pensions. He describes it as a financial and political trap that could devastate private businesses when funds run low.

Amor's insights emerged during a discussion with Tania Costa, where he dissected the specific risks of the Central Bank of Cuba's approved mechanism. Under this plan, businesses are expected to hand over cash from their sales to pensioners in their area, with the promise of later reimbursement by the government.

The Risks of Delayed Reimbursement

The first risk Amor highlights is the potential delay in reimbursement. "What happens if three or four months go by and the bank doesn't pay me back? Do I stop paying the pensioner? Do I continue paying them? How do we handle this?" Costa posed these questions to the economist.

Insufficient Funds for Payouts

The second, more volatile scenario involves pensioners arriving on the first of the month to collect their payments, only to find the business unable to provide them due to low sales the previous day.

"Imagine a pensioner comes on the first to collect their pension, and you had a poor day selling meals. Not every day generates the same revenue in business. Private business owners know that one day they might earn X, and the next, a third of that, because that's the nature of private enterprise," Amor explained.

In Amor's view, the business owner would then have to inform the pensioners that they can't be paid, leading those seniors to complain to the local Communist Party delegate.

Political Repercussions

"These elderly individuals will protest to the local communist delegate and say, 'Look, Tania hasn't paid our pension because she says she has no money,'" he illustrated using the presenter's name.

According to the economist, the regime's response would be swift and punitive: "Look, we're going to temporarily shut down your business to remind you of who we are. And this will happen because the communists don't want people to make money."

The Regime's Motives

Amor argues that the regime will exploit any breach to dismantle businesses. "What they want is to eliminate private initiatives, and when a private business is like a bull that's been stabbed and has fallen, the communist delivers the final blow because they want to destroy that business."

He further debunks the official justification, which claims the primary goal is to eliminate bank queues. "What concerns the bank director more than the line and crowding—which have persisted for years—is the potential for social unrest."

A Looming Financial Crisis

The most severe warning points to the future: "The day the regime can't pay, they shift that responsibility onto the SMEs."

This scheme is part of a liquidity crisis that already led the Granma government to admit in June it lacked the more than 400 million pesos needed to pay its 111,000 pensioners for that month, while Havana and Santiago de Cuba saw queues four to six hours long outside banks.

The pilot program launched in April 2026 in four Havana municipalities and expanded in May to Holguín, where about 20 SMEs began paying pensions to nearly 5,000 retirees. On July 17, the Central Bank of Cuba included it in a package of 176 emergency economic measures, which also involves issuing new 2,000 and 5,000 peso notes.

Amor leaves no room for ambiguity: "The first thing I propose is to immediately abolish this madness. This is yet another of the many whims of the Castro regime, which end up failing, and they later blame the blockade and embargo for what goes wrong."