The Cuban government plans to reduce its role in small businesses, but continue to direct a centralized economy that eschews markets and private property, a Cuban official said on Sunday. Economy Minister Marino Murillo said the communist-led island is “updating,” not reforming its fragile economy and does not plan to copy the market socialism of China or Vietnam. “We are of the opinion that today the state has a group of activities it must get out of. The state doesn't have to be in charge of everything,” he said in a speech to the National Assembly. “The state has to be in charge of the economy, of the most important things,” Murillo said in his speech. He cited the example of small barber shops, where barbers have been allowed for several months to lease their chairs and charge their own prices, within limits, instead of having the state run the entire enterprise. That kind of change “must be extended to other services,” Murillo told the assembly at its regularly scheduled semi-annual meeting. Cuba has been in the grips of an economic crisis the past two years that has forced it to cut imports, freeze the Cuban bank accounts of foreign businesses on the island and hold off on paying its bills. Before his speech, Murillo told reporters the Cuban government is looking at ways to modernize the island's economy, but that “one cannot speak of reform.” “It's an updating of the economic model where the economic categories of socialism, not the market, will take priority,” he said. “It lightens a group of things of the economic model, but we are not going to hand over property,” Murillo said. The government, which controls 90 percent of the economy, owns most things on the Caribbean island. When Raul Castro replaced older brother Fidel Castro as president in 2008, there were expectations of change in one of the world's last communist economies. Many thought that Raul Castro was less of a communist ideologue than his brother and would move toward opening the economy as communist-run China and Vietnam have done. Many Cubans have said they are anxious for changes that will allow them to make more money.
