Manuel Marrero Cruz, Prime Minister of Cuba, presented on Monday before the Council of State the implementation schedule of the Government’s projections to correct distortions and boost the economy.

According to the Presidency’s website, the first ordinary session of this body in 2024 took place at the National Capitol, headed by its head, Esteban Lazo Hernández, and was attended by Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic.

At the meeting, the head of government discussed in depth several elements of the measures that were presented to the deputies at the Second Ordinary Session of the National Assembly of People’s Power (Parliament), held last December.

Marrero Cruz recalled that the normative provisions regulating the salary provisions to stimulate permanence in the Health and Education sectors were already published in the Official Gazette of the Republic; as well as the legal norms for the tariff measures, the new retail and wholesale prices of fuels, and the updated rates for passenger transportation, among others, were approved.

In this regard, he highlighted the communicational actions developed to date to inform the people, mainly through the transmission of several Round Tables on these issues, as well as the follow-up and control of the implementation of the decisions adopted.

The political and communicational assurance of their implementation and the support of the factors at all levels are key to provide the greatest amount of information to the people, with the aim of clarifying any concerns, concluded the Cuban Prime Minister.

For his part, Díaz-Canel highlighted, among the priorities for this stage of work, the strengthening of national unity, based on the elements raised by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz in his speech on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution, in Santiago de Cuba; the strengthening of ideological work; the political assurance of the measures approved in Parliament; and the systematic discussion of negative trends in Cuban society.

Regarding the measures approved, the Head of State insisted that none of them will be applied until the conditions are created in the country; but that it will be done gradually, with special attention to people in vulnerable situations, taking into account the principle of the Revolution that no one will be left helpless, and where everyone must assume the corresponding responsibility in their control and follow-up, especially the Parliament in the systematic verification of the results achieved; accompanied by a solid political communication.

Subsequently, it was approved not to carry out, in the first quarter of 2024, the first process of accountability of the delegate to his electors of the XVIII mandate of the Municipal Assemblies of People’s Power and to evaluate its development later in the year, taking into account the results of compliance with Agreement 70-X of the Council of State.

Carlos Rafael Fuentes León, vice president of the Commission for Attention to the Local Bodies of the People’s Power of the Cuban Parliament, explained that the agreement adopted on October 9, 2023 postponed the realization of this process for the first quarter of the year 2024.

To make up for it, the document included several actions, mainly the release of the delegates from their work duties, whose work would allow them to do so during the remainder of 2023, with a view to increasing their ties and permanent attention to the voters, as well as to provide them with the necessary information.

In turn, the 70-X agreement stipulated that the municipal bodies of the People’s Power, in their last ordinary session of the past year, should evaluate the attention given to the issues raised and how the delegates’ relationship with their electors is progressing.

In compliance with the above, the presidents of the municipal assemblies established the necessary coordination to make it effective. Of the 12,429 delegates to the municipal assemblies, 9,901 were released from their work duties, representing 79.6 percent (%) of the total; of these, 5,285 were released full time and 4,616 partially, attending to their responsibilities. Two thousand 392 were not released, a figure which includes the directors of the municipal assemblies and other delegates whose responsibilities did not allow their release, said Fuentes León.

In this regard, in this item of the session’s agenda, it was informed that the measures taken guaranteed that, between October 15 and December 31, 2023, the delegates released from their work responsibilities throughout the country reached a direct exchange with more than 2,500,000 voters; and that, by this and other means, 86,755 proposals were received, of which 74.9% were solved.

In addition, 69,734 control actions were carried out on entities providing services of local incidence during this period.

Finally, the members of the Council of State approved the Plan of Topics for the meetings of this body in the year 2024, in accordance with its constitutional and legal powers, and particularly with the issues of greatest importance and direct impact on the population.

For the preparation of the Plan of Topics, the proposals of the members of the Council of State, the presidents of permanent working commissions of the National Assembly, the provincial governments, the municipal assemblies of the People’s Power, officials and other specialists consulted were taken into account.

More than 80 proposals were received, of which 55 were reflected in some way, including the analysis of public policies, government programs, control of the implementation of laws and decrees, control of compliance with the State budget, among others, explained Homero Acosta Álvarez, secretary of the Cuban legislature.

During the session, the agreements adopted by this body in its previous meetings were also checked.