The Cuban communists take out the neoliberal manual: they freeze state staff and reduce ministries

The Cuban government announced the implementation of a set of measures framed within a so-called “macroeconomic stabilization plan,” which is nothing more than a drastic fiscal adjustment in the purest style of neoliberalism, which communists have so often criticized.

The neoliberal playbook entails raising the prices of basic services for the population, such as electricity, water, liquefied gas, fuels, natural medicine, and public transport. But even so, the adjustment also affects the government itself, which is considering the possibility of reducing the number of ministries.

⚠️⚠️Freeze staffing plans of the state sector and approve a new organization of the government that includes a change in the number of Ministries… new hefty package announced by the Cuban regime today. #Cuba #Cuba pic.twitter.com/qOPxSm4tX8 — Mag Jorge Castro🇨🇺 (@mjorgec1994) December 20, 2023

According to Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz, it is necessary to implement a fair savings policy in certain non-essential cases. This includes “a resizing of the budgeted sector that covers the structures of the central, provincial, and municipal government (freezing staffing plans).”

To achieve this purpose, during 2024, a proposal for Policy and preliminary Law Project for the Organization of the Central State Administration will be developed. The goal is that the structural adjustment be described in a law.

The communist leader explained that “currently, 51% of the workforce is in the budgeted sector and 49% in the business sector.”

Historically, Cuban communists and the international left have criticized neoliberal measures of government reduction, price increases, and privatization of state-owned enterprises.

One of the most common arguments is that neoliberal policies tend to increase economic inequality and the cost of adjustments falls on the poorest. However, when the communists themselves take these measures, they change the name, and instead of “neoliberal hefty package,” they euphemistically call it a “macroeconomic stabilization plan.”