A crackdown on the booming black market is first on a list of major reforms President Fidel Castro says he'll enact to trim socialist spending and rescue Cuba's crisis-ridden economy.
The country's parliament, meeting for the first time this year, gave Castro's government virtual carte blanche Monday to act to slash the budget deficit and prop up the Cuban peso.Government spending now is running some 30 percent above income.
Castro vowed to hold to Cuba's socialist path, with free education, health care and universal employment.
"I don't want to bring capitalist recipes to our country," he said.
But deputies approved government suggestions that once would have been anathema to the socialist state: taxes, new charges for once-free services, and subsidy cuts for the 70 percent of state enterprises that lose money.
"The world is totally in the hands of capitalism," Castro said mournfully at the close of the two-day session. "That will last a relatively prolonged period of time. . . .
"We have to make concessions . . . indispensable in order to survive and to be able to develop."
He won long applause when he vowed to crack down on black marketeers with a decree this week "on the confiscation of goods from those who enrich themselves illegally."
A growing division between ill-paid state workers and relatively prosperous private businessmen and tourism employees has created resentment and calls for crackdowns on those who profit by selling stolen state property.