It hasn’t taken too long since the announcement some weeks ago by the Cuban government of reforms that would allow small- and medium-sized ventures to formally incorporate as businesses and access state financing. This is arguably the most profound official policy shift since the communist takeover on the Caribbean island, for ordinary Cubans to move to take advantage of what, contextually, is a ‘revolutionary’ shift in official policy.
The announcement came, truth be told, several years after ordinary Cubans had responded to the scarcity of a wide range of consumer goods on the island by, either as individuals or groups, travelling to various countries in the region to establish critical business links with the private sector in those countries that allowed them to acquire relatively modest quantities of a range of goods, particularly clothing and cosmetics and to use these to create and build thriving small- and medium-sized businesses back home.
