Economist Pedro Monreal Warns: Cuba's 176 Measures Lack Macroeconomic Stability

On Sunday, economist Pedro Monreal released a comprehensive analysis pointing out a fundamental structural flaw in the Cuban regime's package of 176 measures: the absence of a focus on macroeconomic stabilization renders the program a directionless partial liberalization.

The 176 measures were unveiled by Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel on June 11, 2026, and subsequently confirmed by the National Assembly in an extraordinary session held on June 18 and 19. These measures are organized into 23 thematic axes.

Key Components of the Reform

Among the most notable provisions are the permission for private banking, the establishment of private exchange houses, the removal of the 100-worker limit for small and medium-sized enterprises, and the allowance for an individual to own multiple businesses.

Monreal posits that the exclusion of macroeconomic stabilization as an independent axis was not an oversight, but rather a deliberate choice.

Underlying Assumptions

He identified three assumptions that might have guided this decision:

• A technical assumption: stabilization is conceived as a cross-cutting component dispersed across various measures.
• A political communication assumption: avoiding the term "acute macroeconomic crisis" to maintain the narrative of "updating the model."
• A sequencing assumption: assuming it is possible to change economic rules first and pursue stabilization later.

"This absence is not an inadvertent omission, but a deliberate decision of institutional and discursive design, and it is problematic even from that perspective," wrote Monreal, summarizing his diagnosis with a vivid image: "putting the cart before the horse."

Symbol of Policy Failure

The case of vegetable oil became the most visible symbol of the failure of this sequence. After the price liberalization removed the cap of 990 Cuban pesos per liter starting June 20, the product's cost skyrocketed from about 1,500 pesos in April to over 4,000 pesos in August, with some areas seeing prices as high as 7,000 pesos.

In response, the regime reinstated provincial controls: Guantánamo and Holguín set prices at 2,200 pesos, Pinar del Río at 2,150, and Villa Clara at 2,500.

According to Monreal, this backtracking places Cuban economic policy in a "structural limbo: without clear market rules, yet also lacking macroeconomic stabilization or effective liberalization."

Continued Criticism and Alternative Proposals

The dispersion of stabilization tools across different axes, Monreal adds, allows the regime to avoid an explicit acknowledgment of the extent of the imbalance and to prioritize the narrative of structural transformation over short-term adjustments that he deems essential.

This is the latest in a series of sustained critiques. At the end of June, Monreal described the package as a "monster" or "deformed hybrid," and by early August he concluded that its only achievement was to "demonstrate that they learned nothing," directly referencing the return of price controls.

As a counterpoint, Monreal compared the official package with the Cuba Transformation proposal, crafted since March 2026 by five Cuban economists—including himself, Mauricio de Miranda Parrondo, Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, Ricardo Torres Pérez, and Pavel Vidal Alejandro—and publicly presented in July.

This proposal, about 120 pages long, advocates for a monetary anchor based on strict control of money issuance and verifiable limitation of monetary financing of the fiscal deficit, subordinating exchange rate unification to this anchor.

Monreal cautioned against dismissing a scenario where "the deepening of imbalances in the coming weeks—worsening of the decline in state production of goods and services, along with rising prices—leads to a revised package with a greater number of measures and an additional axis of macroeconomic stabilization."