The Biden administration, in a major move to support Cuba’s growing private sector, announced new regulations Tuesday allowing Cuban entrepreneurs on the island to open bank accounts in the United States for the first time. States and carry out remote online transactions.
The release of banking rules could help entrepreneurs grow and encourage more Cubans to start small businesses, Biden administration officials said, and aims to help Cubans facing hardship amid the country’s economic crisis.
Until now, due to the strict economic embargo that the United States has long maintained against Cuba, private owners could not access American banks and had to rely largely on remittances from their relatives in the States. -United to finance their businesses.
The U.S. Treasury Department said the new rules applied only to “independent private sector contractors” who had no ties to the Cuban Communist Party, the military, members of the Cuban National Assembly or anyone appearing on a list of officials sanctioned by the United States.
The Cuban government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a major turnaround decades after Cuba’s revolutionary leaders nationalized the economy and banned private businesses in the 1960s, the Cuban government in 2021 allowed the creation of small and medium-sized private businesses.
Since then, these companies have grown significantly, last year importing about the same amount of goods as the Cuban government, according to Cuban officials.
Cuban economists estimate that the private sector now accounts for nearly a third of all jobs on the communist island, with more than 11,000 licenses issued to private companies. Each private company is authorized to hire a maximum of 100 employees.
