The analysis in Cuban trade unions of the 2023 plan and budget in grassroots organizations should open the way for ideas and proposals to increase production, as expected by the country, exposed to accentuated difficulties.

By Roberto Morejón

The analysis in Cuban trade unions of the 2023 plan and budget in grassroots organizations should open the way for ideas and proposals to increase production, as expected by the country, exposed to accentuated difficulties.

With the assent of the government, confident in the criteria of the affiliates, the Cuban trade union movement began the aforementioned review, an opportunity to suggest and commit itself in various aspects.

These should be the increase of production and exports as well as of the offers to the population, since Cuba lives a sanitary normality, thanks to the control of the Covid-19, with autochthonous vaccines.

The period of confronting the pandemic forced the disbursement of important financial allocations, which together with the tightening of the U.S. blockade and the international crisis, with galloping inflation, had a negative impact on the standard of living of the population in the largest of the Antilles.

Precisely, the nation is experiencing an uncomfortable inflation, appeals to new mechanisms for food distribution, today below the needs, and seeks to alleviate the deficit in public transportation.  

In such a difficult situation, union leaders expect their members to contribute with valuable initiatives to improve the planning, management and control of the economy.

And they can do so by thinking about how to develop the export of goods and services, substitute imports, take better advantage of the resources granted by foreign investors and, above all, increase the sowing of crops in the fields.

It is necessary to give, for example, a decisive impulse to the socialist state enterprise, today with greater autonomy, but still far from assimilating the incentives received.

Likewise, the Cuban Workers' Central promotes in the units directly subsidized by the state budget the proposal of actions to reduce the country's budget deficit and increase the control of financial, material and human resources.

How to further exploit the productive capacities should also be discussed in the assemblies of the salaried workers because the economy is not alien to them.

Their contributions will be analyzed in due time in a rough year for Cubans, although they aspire to greater welfare compared to 2022.

The workers have in their favor that even in the midst of these difficulties, the nation's budget prioritizes the stabilization of the macroeconomy, the recovery of the electro-energy system's capacities and the reduction of social inequalities.