The Cuban Communist Party approved an emergency economic reform package on Thursday aimed at opening parts of the island’s tightly controlled economy as the government grapples with a deepening economic crisis and renewed pressure from the United States.
The move came one day after Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel convened an unscheduled session of the Communist Party of Cuba, or PCC, to discuss measures to boost production, attract investment, and ease restrictions.
“We need to unleash production, to have more output and less restriction,” Diaz-Canel said in a nationally televised address Thursday morning.
While the full reform package has not yet been published, Diaz-Canel outlined several of its key components and described it as the product of months of consultation and debate, according to Cuban state media.
“This public debate broadened, strengthened, and reinforced the projections contained in the initial document,” he said. “And respecting the opinion of our people, in recent months we have worked intensively with experts, consulting criteria, including international criteria, using Artificial Intelligence platforms.”
Diaz-Canel said officials studied the experiences of China and Vietnam, two communist-led countries that embraced market-oriented reforms while maintaining one-party political systems.
The proposals appear to represent one of the most significant economic overhauls considered by Cuba’s leadership in years. Among the measures outlined by the president are plans to allow new economic actors to participate in the tourism industry under what he described as “new models,” encouraging foreign direct investment, expanding the private sector, and revitalizing struggling industries such as agriculture, foreign trade, and real estate.
The government also plans to decentralize economic decision-making by granting greater autonomy to state-owned enterprises and local municipalities.
“I believe the country will always be stronger and have greater capacity to respond to the extent that its municipalities are also stronger,” Diaz-Canel said.
He argued that state-owned companies should be given greater independence to manage their own operations.
“They should operate without intermediaries, without interference in their management,” he said. “And above all, with significant participation from the company’s workers—who are the owners, who represent the State, who represent the people’s social ownership of these companies.”
The proposals also include a notable outreach effort to Cubans living abroad, many of whom reside in the U.S. Diaz-Canel said the government would seek to create a clearer framework for expatriates interested in investing in the island.
“To whoever wants to build with Cuba without seeking to impose anything upon it, we say with our hand on our heart: Here is your home, and here is the open door,” the Cuban president said. “Because, for this homeland at this hour, not a single good Cuban is expendable.”
Diaz-Canel said state enterprises would receive expanded authority to engage directly in international trade, retain portions of foreign currency earnings, and form partnerships with private businesses and other economic actors.
“Collectively, they will have export and import powers; they will have contracts that will allow them to earn foreign currency and, in addition to their contributions to the country, they will have a portion of that foreign currency to expand their production and services,” he said.
Despite proposing market-oriented reforms, Diaz-Canel stressed that the measures were intended to strengthen rather than abandon Cuba’s socialist system.
“Cuban revolutionaries today face challenges of enormous magnitude that demand unity, ideological steadfastness, courage, boldness, and creative resilience,” he said.
Diaz-Canel directly blamed U.S. sanctions and pressure campaigns for worsening the island’s economic woes.
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He cited what he called the “relentless aggression of the intensified economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States government and the criminal intent behind the hostile actions of the current administration.”
The announcement comes as Washington has intensified pressure on Havana. Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against Cuba’s state-owned Union Cuba-Petroleo oil and gas company as part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to tighten restrictions on the communist-run island.