"People do not eat explanations", affirmed the first secretary of the Party in the province, Osbel Lorenzo Rodríguez, given the justifications of the representatives of the state enterprises of this territory with clear non-compliances in their productive plans, even when the accounting balances of many of these are positive. This was the crude analysis of the economy's performance in the territory during the first three months of 2025.
Las Tunas, Cuba.- While acknowledging the negative impact of external factors, the review focused on what could be done here to overcome these "made in USA" obstacles and exploit the country's capabilities. "No one is empowered to fail to comply for subjective reasons," the party leader said.
Lorenzo Rodriguez also described the economic recovery as slow and listed items such as some crops, sheep, and rabbit meat or charcoal, in which the plans for this time of the year have not been achieved, but this cannot be blamed on the commercial and financial siege the country is undergoing.
The advance towards a mentality of development, of growth, is essential if we want to be consistent with the legacy of Fidel, who pointed out Las Tunas' industry and agriculture as the strong points of its prosperity, he considered. The people's opinion, he warned, is a thermometer to measure the efficiency of the management of the executives and their link with the people, especially in the areas more distant from the urban centers. And this popular judgment, he warned, is saying that the link between decision-makers and their bases is not happening as it should.
At the end of March, the public sector only materialized one-third of its physical production planned for this moment of the current calendar. That, in simple terms, means that we can only touch with our hands one out of every three products or inputs that the existing public entities in the land of Vicente García predicted to have at the beginning of April. However, their agreed sales and retail circulation figures showed stable behavior in the aforementioned period. This is the unmistakable sign that too many state-owned companies still oxygenate their balance sheets using high prices; something that fills the pockets of their workers, but which is bad news for the economy of Tuna as a whole, because it perpetuates the vicious circle of inflation and the depression of supply.
The sugar agroindustry is the living expression of this reality since it is already clear that its sugar production will reach historic lows. However, the production of molasses could give some balance to the accounting records of these entities. However, they could force the country to import the sweet grain and thus satisfy the minimum domestic demand, taking into account that the production plan of Las Tunas was the largest of all those defined for the Cuban provinces.
The flattering balance between income and public budget expenditures of the territory and the reduction of the monetary circulating money, concerning the similar period of 2024, is praiseworthy; but, as pointed out by sources of the Provincial Government in the same deliberative space, they pale before the non-fulfillment of the agreed quantities of goods to be created, which are the ones that people need.
The physical production is the key indicator and the one that makes the difference, said the governor, Yelenys Tornet Menéndez. In the board of directors, in the labor collectives, these issues have to be discussed to look for solutions, she emphasized. The highest government authority in this part of Cuba identified among the pending issues of the Tunisian state economy the failures in the collection and payment chains, the problems with the retribution to natural persons and investment processes, the non-payments to the peasant sector, and the illegalities detected in the exercise of control over the use of land and livestock.
Due to its size, the public sector has the leading role in the productive and service framework in the Balcony of the Cuban East. However, the participation of the non-state sector is not negligible, especially because of its contribution to the government budget. Right now, according to official figures, individual entrepreneurs, private companies, and cooperatives as a whole exceed the estimates made in this regard before the beginning of the year.
Paradoxically, the performance of the private and cooperative non-agricultural segment remains outside the usual examination of the local economy. Where the magnifying glass has been placed is on the legality and cleanliness of the links they have established with the state. The preliminary conclusions of this review have brought to light several violations that, it was learned during the forum, have already led to fifty administrative measures and some 90 political measures on the offenders.
In the field of the incomprehensible, finally pointed out the first secretary of the PCC in the province, falls the four percent non-execution of the social assistance budget for the period January-March 2025. We are talking, he said, about money that should be used efficiently, but without unnecessary delays because, he stressed, it benefits the most vulnerable part of the citizenship.
