Havana, July 11 (RHC)-- In an extraordinary work session, the Council of Ministers exercised the legislative initiative to present six decree laws for approval by the Council of State, from which the legal provisions for non-governmental economic actors are updated. states of the country.

According to the explanation offered during the meeting of the highest government body - headed by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, and directed by the member of the Political Bureau and Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz—, for the modifications in question, two fundamental objectives have been taken into account.

The first of them responds to how the distortions that are present in the actions of non-state forms of management are corrected. Together with this, actions are outlined aimed at organizing said activity, in such a way that it acts coherently and that its contribution is a true complement to the national economy.

In this sense, the draft decree laws modifying Decree Law 44 "On the Exercise of Self-Employment" were presented; Decree Law 46 on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises; and Decree Law 47 on Non-Agricultural Cooperatives.

Also included are the Decree Law amending Decree Laws 48 and 65, which establish the Special Social Security Regime applicable to Self-Employed Workers and members of Non-Agricultural Cooperatives and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and the of the owners and contracted workers of the Local Development Projects, respectively; the Decree Law amending Law 113 “On the Tax System”; and the Decree Law amending Decree-Law 45 “For Contraventions in the Exercise of Self-Employment, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Non-Agricultural Cooperatives.”

As detailed during the work day, the final result of these documents is the result of a broad consultation process that began in 2023, in which, at different times, agencies of the Central State Administration, territorial governments, bodies were involved. decision-makers, the core group of legislative capacity, non-state economic actors, the Council of Ministers and others.

All this analysis made it possible to carry out a more comprehensive evaluation of the proposals or criteria issued, and at the same time improve the quality of the standards presented. Likewise, topics were defined that need to continue studying with the purpose of further improving the performance of these actors.

As an important element to take into account, during the meeting of the Council of Ministers it was insisted that these are not the only legal norms that apply to non-state economic actors, hence the need to work in harmony with the updating of other specific standards from different organizations that are also updated at this time.

The proposal to modify the rules for the management of non-state actors in the economy, if applied correctly and with due control, in accordance with the measures adopted as part of the Government's projections to correct distortions and re-boost the economy, will make it possible greater ordering and regulation of the economy, and in turn of said actors, taking into account their complementary mission within the national economy.

When reflecting on these issues, the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, emphasized that the updating of the regulations “is not at all a crusade against MSMEs, nor against other forms of non-state management.”

We are talking - the prime minister stressed - about policies that were approved in the Party Congress and ratify the participation of different actors in the Economic and Social Development Strategy.

“It is not about banning or taking a step back; “This is regular, it is accompanying, leading, controlling,” he said.

The Cuban prime minister recalled that the initially approved standards made clear the intention to update their content after two years, taking into account the context in which the country developed.

He recognized that these first regulations “suffered from many aspects that were not foreseen and left a legal vacuum that led to certain distortions that need to be corrected, to which were also added errors made by state counterparts at the time of contracting.

All of this is updated, he emphasized, to “continue advancing on the right path” and specifying “the role that corresponds to each actor in the country's economy; The Constitution of the Republic makes it clear that the main actor in the economy is the socialist state company and the different forms of non-state management are a complement to it.”

The updating exercise that we are carrying out at the moment is aimed at "reordering the work and perfecting it, so that all forms of management contribute to the economic and social development of the country."

As part of the agenda of this extraordinary session of the Council of Ministers - where members of the Political Bureau, Esteban Lazo Hernández, president of the National Assembly of People's Power, and Salvador Valdés Mesa, vice president of the Republic, as well as others, were also present guests of the National Assembly of People's Power—the members of the highest government body also approved the Decree modifying Decree 49 “On unauthorized activities to be carried out by private Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Non-Agricultural Cooperatives and Workers Own account".

Likewise, the Decree was adopted for the creation of the National Institute of Non-State Economic Actors.

Also in this extraordinary meeting, a video was shown to the members of the Council of Ministers that includes the update made by the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, during the VIII Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Party, on the status of the implementation of the Projections of the Government to correct distortions and re-boost the economy during the first half of 2024. This report will be presented to the deputies in the next session of the National Assembly of People's Power.  (Source: Presidency of Cuba).