New credit policy coming

Thanks to a reader who scans Cuban media, absolutely all of it, here’s an article from a Camaguey newspaper about the new credit policy that is intended to “achieve a greater liberation of productive forces” in the Cuban economy, according to the Communist Party’s economic policy guidelines published this year.

It’s an interview with Central Bank President Ernesto Medina Villaveirán. He calls the new credit policy one of the most “novel and important” policies the bank will undertake and he says it will be promulgated by early next year.

Highlights:

• Small entrepreneurs will be able to receive loans, unlike before. Minimum loan amount will be 3,000 pesos.

• Individuals will be able to get loans, especially to build or rehabilitate housing, and loans can pay for materials and/or labor.

• Loan amounts will vary according to need and ability to pay. Borrowers can increase their borrowing capacity if family members co-sign loans or if bank accounts are posted as collateral.

• Banks will watch their loans like hawks because “We cannot lose one cent.” Medina adds: “Here there is no government with a machine to print money as in capitalist countries, where when a bank say it’s close to going under, they inject a few billion.”

• Bank accounts will “make viable for those who undertake private businesses, the access to agreed payments with enterprises,” the reporter writes, and adds that the 100-peso limit on payments from state enterprises to private entities has been repealed in the interest of encouraging state entities to contract more with private entities.