Cuba’s economy is expected to expand 4 percent in 2022, after eking out an estimated 2 percent growth this year, as tourism recovers and tax revenue increases post-pandemic, according to Prime Minister Manuel Marrero. That’s despite rampant inflation on the island.
“Cuba should overcome the contractions we saw in 2019 and 2020, even if we don’t reach the same economic activity of 2019,” Marrero stated. He added the unemployment rate stands at 1.4 percent, “which by international standards is full employment, even if the rate did increase slightly.” Some 3.9 million people are employed by the state and 1.5 million are in the private sector.
Cuba saw rare outbursts of public protests earlier this year, in part fuelled by economic hardship. As tourism dried up amid the pandemic, the economy shrank alarmingly.
Left unmentioned in the report is Cuba’s inflation rate. In October, a government official admitted that economic reforms, including ending a two-tiered currency system, had fuelled price increases of 60 percent in the formal market during the first 10 months of the year - and up to 6,900 percent in the informal, or unregulated, market.
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