LOW PRODUCTIVITY
Perhaps the most important negative consequence of
the revolutionary policies has been the decline in the
productivity of the economy, and the most significant
challenge facing the authorities is how to incentivize
the population to increase production and productivity.
The economic system implemented by the Castro administration has been incapable of increasing production so as to be able to satisfy the domestic demand for
food and generate exports. Last year Raúl Castro asked
some 3,000 public enterprises and state agencies to
identify the main problems that they were encountering and to make proposals to solve them. The respondents blamed their problems mainly on the centralization of decision making, citing specifically the
bureaucratic controls imposed by the Ministry of
Economy and Planning and the Ministry of Foreign
Trade, and the regulations whereby all transactions in
foreign exchange have to be channeled through a sin.
