A nascent private sector composed of small businesses and cooperatives will employ half of Cuba's work force by 2015 under economic reforms in the only communist country in the Americas, the government said Thursday.
In a report to the National Assembly, Finance Minister Lina
Pedraza estimated that an additional 1.8 million people will be employed outside the public sector in five years.
President Raul Castro earlier this year announced plans to eliminate 500,000 state jobs by early next year, while at the same time opening the way for Cubans to set up small businesses as a way of taking up the slack.
The state currently employs 90 percent of Cuba's five million strong work force.
Only 824,000 people now work in non-state sector jobs, but Pedraza projected that number will rise to 2.6 million by 2015, or a bit more than half the work force.
Although the government is permitting Cubans to open small businesses in activities that once were off limits, it also is imposing steep taxes on earnings and on hiring of new employees to prevent accumulation of private wealth.
Pedraza said tax rates will go up with each new employee hired by a private business, eventually making new hires uneconomical.
Dissident economist Oscar Espinosa compared that approach to bonsai plants whose development is artificially arrested.
“They want to make changes so that nothing changes,” he said. - Sapa-AFP