Thursday, July 29, 2010

Legislature examines pilot projects

Cuba’s legislature convened its committees yesterday for days of discussions of lots of domestic and foreign policy issues – the need to improve coffee production and stop spending $50 million annually on imported coffee; veterans care; improvements in highway safety and the railroad system; and lots more. There are brief accounts of many of these discussions in Cuban media – see the list of articles at top of the Agencia Cubana de Noticias website.

Also on the agenda is a review of pilot projects in state retail and service businesses such as taxi companies, barbershops, and beauty shops, where the state has in a way turned the business over to workers. In the barbershops, for example, the workers pay rent and a license fee then set prices, buy their own supplies, and keep their profits.

This report says that the committee concerned with services will also examine experiments in the sale of farm products in Havana province and the nationwide experience in the sale of construction materials in the Cuban peso, not the hard-currency peso. Excerpt:

La comisión de Atención a los Servicios, en su primer día de sesiones, también trató sobre la aplicación del experimento de arrendar taxis a los choferes, iniciativa aplicada desde enero de este año con buenos resultados.

Mañana ese grupo parlamentario tratará, entre otros temas, la puesta en funcionamiento de la venta liberada para la población de materiales de construcción, en moneda nacional, iniciada en Sancti Spíritus en enero último y extendida a todo el país.

También incluye la comercialización de productos agropecuarios en las dos provincias habaneras, la aplicación del experimento de arrendar barberías y peluquerías y el cumplimiento del plan de circulación mercantil minorista del Ministerio del Comercio Interior.

A report from Europa Press here. My earlier notes on pilot projects here and here.

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