Skip to content
You can now search across every topic, entity and event.What's new
Cuba Dispatch
8SEP

Cuba's private-bank law, no licence yet

2 min read
13:24UTC

Thirteen days after Cuba's National Assembly legalised private banks, no first licence had issued and Gaceta Oficial No. 54 carried no implementing rule. Díaz-Canel says the reform answers Cuba's needs, not Washington's pressure.

← Back to Havana makes the hiring middleman optionalJump to analysis ↓
PoliticsDeveloping
Key takeaway

Cuba legalised private banks on 18 June but had issued no licence by 1 July.

No first private-bank or exchange-house licence had been issued in Cuba as of Wednesday 1 July, thirteen days after the National Assembly passed a 176-measure market-opening package on 18 June . The reform authorises private corporate banking under the Banco Central de Cuba (BCC), the island's central bank, alongside non-bank microcredit lenders, a full crypto framework and foreign-currency accounts opened without prior state approval 1. Gaceta Oficial No. 54, the official state gazette dated 29 June, carried no confirmed implementing rule.

Cuba's president Miguel Díaz-Canel told the Assembly the measures answer the island's own needs: "We are not doing this because of Yankee pressure" 2. That claim deserves weight, because the package may be sovereign signalling that always expected the sanctions to bite rather than a bid for relief. Read either way, the licensing gap stays open: an announced reform still needs an opened bank behind it, and the correspondent-banking problem returns the moment a licence issues. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already called the package insufficient and ruled out any sanctions relief .

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Cuba's parliament passed a huge package of economic reforms on 18 June, including a rule letting private companies run actual banks for the first time since the 1960s. Two weeks later, on 1 July, no such bank had actually opened. That gap matters because the reform is a promise on paper until Cuba's central bank issues the licences and rules that make it real. Cuba's official gazette, which normally carries that kind of technical detail, published its latest issue on 29 June with nothing in it about how a private bank would actually get approved.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Cuba's central bank has never issued a private banking licence before. Its regulatory apparatus, examination standards, capital-adequacy rules and deposit protections were built to supervise only state banks, so a first-of-its-kind licensing round has no internal template to work from.

Separately, the reform's dollar-account provisions assumed a working correspondent-banking route that existed on 18 June and did not exist by 23 June, once BFI was designated. A licensing round for institutions that would still need to clear through a blacklisted bank has little practical purpose to rush.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    Diaspora remittances and dollar savings continue moving through informal banqueros and CADECA rather than any new licensed channel.

    Immediate · Assessed
  • Risk

    A private bank licensed under the reform would still need a foreign-currency correspondent route, and BFI's 23 June designation removed the one that existed.

    Short term · Assessed
  • Risk

    The reform's own devaluation commitment, moving the peso from its official 555 rate toward the informal 670, has no private-bank price-discovery mechanism yet to help absorb it.

    Medium term · Suggested
Sources:OnCubaNews·Akerman LLP·Federal Register
Mentions:Banco Central de Cuba →Miguel Díaz-Canel →Gaceta Oficial →Marco Rubio →Cuba →Morrison Foerster →OFAC →Havana →Washington →Banco Financiero Internacional →
First Reported In

Update #9 · Cuba's dollar reform, no bank to clear it

OnCubaNews· 1 Jul 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
Caused by
Decreto 160 flips Cuba's default to yes
Decreto 160 extends liberalisation while the private-bank licence promised in June's reform remains unissued.
Occurred 4 Aug 2026
Read story →
This Event
Cuba's private-bank law, no licence yet
The 176-measure reform stays enabling-only, with no bank yet licensed to make its dollar provisions real.
Led to
OFAC hits Cuba's main clearing bank
The reform's dollar-banking provisions cannot function because OFAC designated the clearing bank they would route through.
Occurred 23 Jun 2026
Read story →
Cuba lets foreign firms hire directly
The unlicensed 176-measure reform established the pattern of announcement without implementing machinery that Decree 325 repeats.
Occurred 4 Sept 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
China
China
Foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun called China-Cuba cooperation open, transparent and legitimate on 11 August, after the 6 August designations reached Cuban military attachés posted to China and Russia. The statement named no new assistance.
Russia
Russia
The Russian embassy in Havana said on 31 August that expanding BRICS full membership is not on the agenda, declining the upgrade Cuba had sought before the New Delhi summit. Moscow remains Cuba's most reliable outside supplier but stopped short of the diplomatic step Havana wanted.
Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic ordered nine Cuban diplomats and their families to leave on 13 August without stating a reason, a rupture Havana has not been given an explanation for. Neither government has since clarified what prompted the expulsion.
Observatorio Cubano de Derechos Humanos
Observatorio Cubano de Derechos Humanos
OCDH's Madrid-based survey found 94 per cent of Cubans in extreme poverty and 84 per cent distrusting Havana's own reform measures, fieldwork closed three weeks before Decree 325. The group monitors from exile because independent rights monitoring cannot operate legally on the island, and Lowdown could not reach a comparable on-island voice.
Cuban government (Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla)
Cuban government (Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla)
Rodríguez answered the 3 September designations on Cubadebate the same day without naming any of the five sanctioned entities, calling the wave collective punishment. Havana has used the same anti-blockade framing for each prior wave rather than contesting individual designations.
US Treasury (OFAC) and State Department
US Treasury (OFAC) and State Department
OFAC designated Banco Exterior de Cuba and four traders on 3 September; its SDN entry links the individual named alongside them only to Alejandro Castro Espín. The State Department's own announcement, not OFAC's listing, called that individual "a grandson of Raul Castro" and the designated entities exploiters of Cuba's resources "for the benefit of the regime."