Tag: Raúl Castro

• Friday, June 24th 2011 - 19:59 UTC

  Venezuela’s Chavez health and prolonged recovery turns into political controversy

  

  Two weeks after surgery in Cuba, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is “stronger than ever” but will not rush home until he is ready, announced Defence minister General Carlos Mata Figueroa.

• Saturday, June 4th 2011 - 06:35 UTC

  Raul Castro completes the octogenarian club to rejuvenate Cuban leadership

  

  Cuban President Raul Castro turned 80 on Friday, vowing to rejuvenate the country's aging leadership and its sagging economy.

• Sunday, May 29th 2011 - 20:00 UTC

  Cuba “needs more than ever church blessings” to support reforms, says Raul

  

  President Raul Castro said that Cuba currently “needs more than ever the blessings from its evangelic churches” to keep advancing with the reforms to update the exhausted economic model of the last fifty years, according to reports in the official Havana media.

• Monday, May 23rd 2011 - 00:31 UTC

  Over 300.000 Cubans have opted to work in the private sector as ‘self-employed’

  

  The number of Cubans working in the private sector continues to rise and now includes over 300,000 as a result of President Raul Castro government’s economic reforms that have been implemented since last October.

• Tuesday, May 17th 2011 - 06:05 UTC

  Cuba announces small private businesses can hire and fire labour

  

  Cuba has given all small businesses the authority to hire (and fire) labour and will loosen other regulations governing private enterprise as part of the broader measures to reform the island’s economy and boost production, the government said in a statement.

• Thursday, May 12th 2011 - 06:28 UTC

  Cuban blacks and mulattos the main victims of Raul Castro’s reforms

  

  Cuban blacks and mulattos will suffer the most with the elimination of a million government jobs, which could easily become a racial problem, consequence of the radical reforms imposed, and ‘must be addressed as a priority’, points out a report from Cuban academic Esteban Morales.

• Wednesday, May 11th 2011 - 01:37 UTC

  “Shape up or ship out”, Cuban communist party tells unprofitable companies

  

  Cuban government companies and cooperatives repeatedly “inefficient” (non profitable) will be handed to the private sector or liquidated, according to the reforms program approved by the island’s VI Communist Party congress and which was officially published Monday.

• Monday, May 9th 2011 - 18:52 UTC

  Cuban government plans to allow residents to travel abroad as tourists

  

  The Cuban government said Monday that it plans to study ways to allow residents of the island to travel abroad as tourists, suggesting it will ease the bureaucratic hurdles and outright restrictions that prevent many residents from leaving.

• Thursday, April 21st 2011 - 06:59 UTC

  Where’s the new blood? Cuban reforms to be implemented by the old guard

  

  Cuba's Communist Party selected President Raúl Castro and hard-liners from the old guard to steer wide-ranging reforms of the island's crumbling economy. As expected, Raúl Castro, 79, was chosen at a four-day party congress to replace his older brother Fidel Castro as first secretary of the ruling party's Central Committee.

• Tuesday, April 19th 2011 - 04:57 UTC

  Private property returns after 50 years: Cubans allowed to buy and sell their homes

  

  Cuba says it will allow people to buy and sell their homes for the first time since the communist revolution in 1959. For the past 50 years, Cubans have only been allowed to pass on their homes to their children, or to swap them through a complicated and often corrupt system.