What's next for Cuba? And this issue's contents

Abstract

In April the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reported that the Cuban economy was expected to shrink by 3.7 percent in 2020 (which, if reflected on as a comment on the robustness of the Cuban economy to such an external shock, should be considered against the expected 5.3 percent average contraction of the Latin America and the Caribbean region as a whole that the Island is part of). [...]contrary to those who blame every problem Cuba ever faces on 'errors by the government', the data do not support that the serious contraction that Cuba is facing from COVID-19 is the result of, or even has been primarily exacerbated by, the country's economic policies. [...]beyond that, and once again independent of one's views about the desirability of tourism as a human economic activity (which this author has great concerns with, though more with its nature than with its amount), the data do not support that the development of the tourism industry in Cuba over the last quarter century has left its economy 'overdependent' on tourism by any meaningful comparative economic measure. Worldwide, a rounded approximate number for tourism's total contribution to world economic activity (or more correctly, the part of that which standard national accounting keeps track of as GDP) and of world employment is 10 percent of each.