Cuba will need "at least five years" to see through economic reforms after encountering problems in plans to lay off half a million state workers, President Raul Castro said. "Carrying out our model is not the task of just one day, not even of one year, and because of its complexity it will require at least five years to complete its implementation," government television quoted him saying after a cabinet meeting late Monday.
"The biggest threat to the revolution resides precisely in the mistakes we could make," said the 79-year-old leader, brother of former president Fidel Castro. Cuba in January began a process of axing 500,000 state employees as part of an ambitious overhaul designed to build up a private sector in an economy that has been run on communist lines by the government since Fidel Castro took power in 1959.
Launched by Raul Castro, the reforms seek to have the former state workers absorbed by the private sector, and for state subsidies to be cut and companies to operate autonomously. Raul Castro called for that project to go ahead "with rush, but without pause." In the meeting with his cabinet and the Council of State, though, he admitted he needed to "change the deadlines" for the reduction of state employees because of "delays."
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