Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel addresses deputies of
the National Assembly of People's Power. July 20, 2022. Cubadebate Photo.

Havana, July 20 (RHC)-- Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez spoke on Wednesday at the Economic Affairs Commission of the National Assembly of People's Power (ANPP), which analyzed the liquidation of the State budget in 2021, the most challenging year of the pandemic in the country.

The President alluded to three elements that characterize the imperialist logic of the United States against Cuba: hegemony, subversion strategy, and economic asphyxiation, which -he said- is the most complicated to face.

The mechanism is to apply a criminal and genocidal policy to provoke a social explosion leading to the toppling of the Cuban Revolution, he denounced.

"There are those who say that the blockade is a pretext of the Government", however, why does the US Administration maintain and intensify this absurd policy? The only explanation is that they are afraid of a socialist construction without a blockade in Cuba", said the President.

He pointed out that the economic asphyxiation has caused shortages of food and medicines, as well as the impossibility of accessing financial resources to purchase raw materials necessary for fundamental national productions.

At another point, referring to difficulties whose solutions depend on Cubans, Díaz-Canel called attention to the existence of business inefficiencies that are supported by the State budget, affecting social spending.

He raised the need for a robust local productive system, strengthening each territory's regional development strategy. "The country will not move forward if we want to apply the same things in all places because each territory has particularities that must be taken into account."

In the President's opinion, it is essential to reduce the administrative and bureaucratic apparatus and that the companies subordinate themselves and make their most significant contributions to the municipalities where they are located.

On prices, one of the issues addressed by the deputies in the debate, Diaz-Canel criticized that state enterprises and private businesses set prices without considering the cost sheets, obtaining profits far in excess of expenses.

"We have to act more at the grassroots. We have to achieve that from the Ministry of Finance and Prices, passing through its provincial departments to the municipal ones, the budget is controlled, but also the price, which can be done with popular control", he stressed.

Regarding the ideological subversion, Diaz-Canel stressed that in order to confront it, a greater revolutionary articulation is essential.

Before the deputies of the Economic Commission, the President said that the National Assembly has to resemble Cuba and its problems more and more "because that way we will be able to find solutions and build consensus."

"We have had to live through a period of tremendous complexity, but we will get out of all the problems. And we will do it by building socialism and the Revolution," he assured.