[AyPee] President Compañero Raul Castro...Fidel's little brother...
faces what could be his toughest year since he took power in 2006. 2017 brings a possible economic recession and a U.S. president-elect who has promised to undo Obama's normalization unless the Cuban government makes new concessions on civil rights. Resistance to pressure from Washington is a founding principle for the Cuban communist system, making domestic concessions in exchange for continued detente a virtual impossibility.
"People expected that after Obama came there would be changes in the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba but that we could keep the best of what we have, the benefits for the people," Alex Romero, a 42-year-old state photography shop employee said. "Trump's not going to be able to get what he wants, another type of Cuba. If the world's number one power takes us on, 2017 is going to be really bad for us."
Cuba publishes few credible economic statistics, but experts expect the country to end this year with gross domestic product growth of 1 percent or less. It maintained a rate close to 3 percent from 2011-2015. One bright spot is tourism, booming since Obama and Castro's detente announcement set off a surge in overall visitor numbers.
The slowness of macroeconomic growth despite a surge of interest in foreign investment and the greatest tourism boom in decades attests to both long-term mismanagement of the Cuban economy and the depth of the crisis in other sectors, particularly aid from Venezuelan in the form of deeply subsidized oil. Venezuela was also the prime destination alongside Brazil for Cuban doctors and other professionals whose salaries go directly to the Cuban government; another vital source of hard currency believed to be slackening. Nickel, another of Cuba's main exports, has seen a sharp price drop this year.
The revenue drop may be creating a vicious cycle for Cuba's state-run industries. Experts say cutbacks in imported industrial inputs this year will lead to lower productivity in Cuba's few domestic industries in 2017 and make zero growth or recession highly likely.
The government cut back summer working hours and gas rations for state-owned vehicles and has so far avoided any sustained power outages. But a crackdown on black-market gasoline sales to taxi drivers led to increased prices, squeezing many Cubans already struggling to get by. Many Cubans say, however, that worsening conditions could drive them to rally around the government rather than against it.
One cushion will be remittances from Cuban expatriates in the United States and other countries, estimated by some experts to be in excess of $3 billion a year and rising as Cubans flood to the United States in fear that they may soon lose special immigration privileges. Another bright spot is Cuba's growing private sector, particularly businesses boosted by increased demand from tourists.
While rising food prices are a constant problem for ordinary Cubans, many of those investing in food production are finding success.
Fernando Funes, owner of a farm that supplies vegetables to about 30 private restaurants in Havana, most with tourist clienteles, has nearly doubled his workforce from 12 to 20 in recent years, all earning about $25 a week.
"We have a lot more opportunities to start projects these days," Funes said. "Personally I'm optimistic about 2017."