A team of five Cuban economists has dropped a 120-page economic blueprint that reads like a controlled demolition plan for the island’s current model. Their three-phase roadmap would steer Cuba away from rigid central planning toward what they call a social-market economy under democratic rule, with an emergency first phase that goes straight at the daily crises most Cubans feel: blackouts, food shortages and a battered tourism sector.
From the outset, the authors link technical fixes to deep institutional surgery. They call for breaking up the powerful military conglomerate GAESA, unifying Cuba’s tangled exchange rates, opening land markets and tying all of that to a broader diplomatic reset. In their view, Cuba must regain access to international lenders and negotiate compensation for confiscated property as part of an overall political transition. The document is framed as a staged, technical program meant to stabilize living conditions quickly while opening legal and institutional paths for more ambitious reform later.
The proposal, released under the initiative "Cuba Transformación," was drafted by economists Mauricio de Miranda Parrondo, Pedro Monreal González, Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, Ricardo Torres Pérez and Pavel Vidal Alejandro. As outlined by the Cuba Study Group, the project is an independent, transnational effort that receives logistical support but is guided by the authors’ own analysis. A briefing circulated by the Observatorio sobre la Economía Cubana underscores the same three-phase structure and the economists’ aim to keep the social cost of transition as low as possible while restoring basic services quickly.
What the plan would do first
The first phase, which the authors say could take about three years, is all about emergency stabilization. It calls for fast approval of emergency power generation contracts, including floating power plants, along with rehabilitation of aging thermoelectric stations. On the food front, the plan pushes for a rapid expansion of agricultural output, and on the external side it seeks to shore up tourism revenues as a short-term lifeline.
To blunt the social impact of reforms, the economists propose a stabilization fund that would channel external resources and proceeds from state-asset sales to protect vulnerable households while changes roll out. They argue that the government should stop automatic bailouts of state firms, unify the current maze of exchange rates into a single realistic rate, lift most price caps and clear the way for private trade and land markets to spur production. As reported by elTOQUE, the paper breaks this emergency agenda into 20 concrete objectives that cover macroeconomic policy, energy, agriculture and external financing.
Targeting GAESA and the military economy
One of the most politically sensitive pieces of the plan goes straight at GAESA, the military-run business empire that dominates key sectors of the Cuban economy. The economists recommend fragmenting GAESA and transferring its companies and foreign-currency reserves to civilian institutions. Their argument is that the money GAESA generates should be used transparently for fiscal and monetary stabilization, not managed in opaque military structures.
U.S. officials and independent analysts estimate that GAESA controls roughly 40 percent of Cuba’s economy, a level of concentration the report describes as a major obstacle to credible reform. The authors say that shifting GAESA’s assets under civilian oversight, and folding its reserves into the central bank, would give the state more real backing for monetary reform and more resources to channel toward priority sectors. Reporting on the proposal and its GAESA recommendations is summarized by CaféFuerte. Broader press coverage has highlighted GAESA’s outsized role in the economy, including analysis by AP.
Money, claims and the U.S. role
The roadmap does not pretend that economics can be divorced from politics. The authors explicitly call for a negotiated transition in which the United States eases sanctions and backs Cuba’s return to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. In parallel, they say, there would need to be a process to resolve decades-old property confiscation claims that currently block normal financial ties.
To handle those disputes, the blueprint proposes a national claims commission that would adjudicate expropriation cases and compensate former owners, in part through bond mechanisms, so that legal redress does not blow up macroeconomic stabilization. Those political and financial prescriptions are highlighted in coverage by the Miami Herald.
Politics and feasibility
The economists are blunt about one key point: their plan only works under certain political conditions. It assumes progress in talks with Washington, credible access to emergency international financing and internal reforms that allow a shift toward rule-of-law institutions. In other words, this is not a technocratic wish list that can simply be decreed tomorrow.
They present the document instead as a contribution to public debate, a menu of sequenced options that could be used by any future government willing to tackle deep change. The authors repeatedly stress the need to time and coordinate reforms so they do not trigger even harsher social pain in the short term. That framing, and the group’s insistence on institutional independence, are detailed in the project release and related commentary from the Cuba Study Group.
Legal and financial implications
If any Cuban government ever tried to implement this blueprint, the most technically complex and politically charged piece would likely be the property claims process. A national commission that uses bonds and other tools to compensate former owners would require significant new legislation at home and delicate diplomacy abroad, particularly with the United States and multilateral lenders.
Negotiating settlements and a way back into the big international financial institutions would almost certainly be the longest part of the agenda. As analysts note, finance, legal reconciliation and national sovereignty are tightly intertwined in Cuba’s case, and none of those can be disentangled with a single policy stroke.
For now, the "Cuba Transformación" project functions as a public, technical roadmap that tries to reframe what is politically and economically thinkable. It offers policymakers, opposition figures and potential international financiers a concrete set of phased options to consider if a negotiated opening ever comes together. The real test will be whether this plan stays on the shelf as a thought exercise or starts to shape conversations in Havana, Washington and the halls of multilateral banks.
