Last month I had the opportunity to hear an incredibly informative and expansive presentation on the updating of the Cuban economy, by Dr. Omar Everleny Perez, director of the University  of Havana's Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy.  I found it so interesting that I wanted to share it with colleagues interested in Cuba's ongoing economic transformation, and with colleagues who aren't yet and should be.  But the presentation was in Spanish and if you've ever seen my efforts at translation on this blog, you'll know that I have no business translating a large presentation like this!  Which is why I am so thrilled to see that the Cuba Study Group has acquired a translated version of Everleny's lecture (minus the graphs), and posted it here on their website. 

At least two things make the report a must-read.  First, it offers a comprehensive, yet still totally digestible-in-just-8-pages overview of where Cuba's economy was going over the past couple decades and where it must now go.  And secondly, it offers constructive, honest criticism of Cuban economic planning where it is due while providing vision for a more sustainable future where it is needed - and does both in as non-political or ideological terms as possible.  A few highlights:

"An analysis of the main economic indicators makes obvious the sagacity and the necessity of the Cuban government when it began updating its economic model, although authorities insisted in their resistance to the changes that have begun, both from current leaders, as well as from the general population, accustomed to a more paternalistic type of state, more interested in spending that in increasing income for the state..."

"The structural problems of the economy have been strongly debated, at least in the financial area for the last 15 years, including the lack of hard currency, distortions of the price system resulting from the overvalued official exchange rate, lack of convertibility, monetary duality, segmented markets, poor performance of the “real” economy, and in particular the sugar industry and agriculture, and the efficiency issues affecting public entities..."

"...[T]he time spent in the socialist project, plus the analysis of the experiences of other Asian socialist countries, places on the Cuban government the urgent imperative of updating its own economic model, where the market must have an ever-growing role in the economy, even while the model of economic management that will prevail is central planning, but taking the market into account."

"...The priority given to the internal market in the general context of the reform in China goes back to its beginnings, based on agricultural reforms, and has been reinforced by the passage of time, reflected in the preference for diversification policies in the form of properties with a high inclination towards the creation of income supported by expanding private economic activity.

"In particular, this leads one to reflect on the fact that although Cuba has an “open economy” (based on exports) very different to China´s, the expansion of the internal market would be key for the development of any economy and therefore must occupy a prominent place in any development strategy. This has obviously been a component that was absent in the Cuban economic policies of the last years, and which must be identified as “the” absolute priority in the development plans for the Cuban economic model."

Anyone who isn't paying attention to the transformation of the Cuban economy today just isn't paying attention.

Want more?  Check out the video Tracey Eaton took at a Q & A session at a conference on the Cuban economy in New York City back in May and posted at his blog, Along the Malecon.