
Cuba began this week a public debate over landmark plans to lift the island's struggling economy and “preserve the revolution’s victories” by liberalizing some private enterprise, admitting small farmers private property, streamlining the vast state bureaucracy by leaving redundant a half-million workers.

The Cuban government has launched an aggressive campaign on its proposed economic reforms as it tries to whip up public opinion enthusiasm and in its own ranks ahead of a Communist Party congress to approve them in April.

The Cuban government is proposing the orderly elimination of the rations’ card according to a document prepared for the ruling party Communist Congress scheduled for April 2011.

Cuban President Raul Castro told unionists to accept layoffs and reforms that open the way for private enterprise as necessary for the survival of socialism.

Cuban government has outlined the taxes that will have to be paid by the country's growing number of self-employed workers. It is the latest stage of President Raul Castro's reforms to move Cuba away from a solely state-run economy.

President Raul Castro sacked his energy and resources minister, the last remaining minister from his brother Fidel cabinet. Minister for basic industry, Yadira Garcia, was fired late Sunday for shortcomings, specifically exerting weak control over resources set aside for investment and production, an official declaration read on state television said.

The Cuban government will cut more than 500,000 state jobs by March as part of a plan to reduce inefficiencies, the country’s largest union said in a statement. The reductions are part of President Raúl Castro’s goal of eliminating 1 million state jobs by 2015, according to the statement.

Fidel Castro said his recent comment that communist-led Cuba's economic model does not work was misunderstood, and that what he really meant was capitalism does not work.

“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore”, admitted Fidel Castro to Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly magazine who interviewed the leader and asked if Cuba's model -- Soviet-style communism -- was still worth exporting to other countries.

Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez said this weekend that she feels “very responsible” following the International Press Institute’s decision to choose her as one of its 60 World Press Freedom Heroes.