Suchergebnisse

While the Latin American economies have been undergoing profound economic reforms in a political context marked by multiparty democracy and free elections, the Cuban government has adamantly rejected meaningful change. During the second half of the 1980s, as the majority of countries in the Western Hemisphere liberalized their economies and rolled back government intervention, Cuba moved in the opposite direction. Since mid-1993 and while in the depths of severe economic crisis, the Cuban government has taken some tentative steps towards liberalizing the economy, but has remained firm on the single-party character of the regime.

Examines the current economic situation, and prospects as they relate to the ongoing process of Western Hemisphere economic integration; since 1970, chiefly. Some focus on the Banco Nacional de Cuba (BNC); CARICOM refers to the 18-member Caribbean Community and Common Market, formed in 1973 to replace the Caribbean Free Trade Association.

Der Verfasser stellt zunächst die wirtschaftliche Krise Kubas in den neunziger Jahren dar. Er geht in diesem Zusammenhang vor allem auf außenwirtschaftliche Rahmenbedingungen und den Lebensstandard der Bevölkerung ein. Im folgenden wird die Expansion der Schattenwirtschaft als Reaktion auf die Krise des kubanischen Wirtschaftssystems behandelt. Vor diesem Hintergrund setzt sich der Verfasser mit der seit 1993 eingeleiteten Politik einer vorsichtigen Liberalisierung der kubanischen Wirtschaft auseinander. Zu dieser Politik zählen die Förderung von Joint Ventures, ein erweiterter Handlungsspielraum der Unternehmen, die Zulassung des US-Dollar als Zahlungsmittel und die Legalisierung der Selbständigkeit. Der Verfasser beurteilt die Wirksamkeit dieser Maßnahmen angesichts des Ausbleibens grundlegender politischer und wirtschaftlicher Reformen eher skeptisch. (BIOst-Wpt)

Two differing views of the economy of contemporary Cuba continue to coexist. One portrays it as dynamic, largely unaffected by inflation, providing full employment for its citizens, diversified, and the unquestioned leader within Latin America in real economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s. The logical conclusion to be drawn from this view is that the Cuban economic model and its implementation in the island have been a success and that other developing countries in Latin America and elsewhere would do well to emulate the Cuban paradigm.

According to the author, while a tide of political and economic change has swept the USSR and Eastern Europe since mid-1989, Cuba has adamantly held on to a one-party political system and to orthodox central planning. He explores the implications for the Cuban economy of reforms in the foreign economic relations of USSR and Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania, and he scrutinizes the effects of the reforms in international economic relations that have already taken place, or are foreseeable, and the Cuban response to them