22OCT

Cuba lets foreign branches hire Cubans

3 min read

17:12UTC

Gaceta No. 82 lets branches of foreign commercial representations sell wholesale and hire Cubans without a state agency taking the margin.

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PoliticsAssessed

Key takeaway

Foreign commercial branches in Cuba may now sell wholesale and hire Cubans directly.

Cuba let branches of foreign commercial representations sell wholesale inside the country and hire Cubans directly on 2 October, in Gaceta Oficial number 82⁠¹. These branches form a legal category separate from the foreign-invested firms that won direct hiring under Decree 325 in September. Until now a Cuban state importer took their goods at the dock, moved them, sold them on and kept the margin.

Déborah Rivas Saavedra, vice-minister at the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment (MINCEX), said all eight investment measures approved in June now have their legal norms and that "several projects are under evaluation". She named no firm that has hired a Cuban directly, and no named investor has yet used any of October's openings. MINCEX also said Cuban companies may now apply online for import and export authorisation without a state intermediary.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Many foreign companies keep a sales office, or branch, in Cuba. Until now they could not sell directly to Cuban shops and businesses. A Cuban state company took their goods when they arrived at the port and resold them. The branches also could not hire Cubans themselves. A state agency chose the workers and paid them, keeping part of the money. A rule published on 2 October lets these branches sell in bulk inside Cuba and hire Cuban staff directly. The government says the rules are ready, but has not named any company using them yet.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Cuba's state kept two chokepoints over foreign business: the importer that nationalised goods at the dock and the employing entity that supplied labour. Both gave the state hard currency and control over who worked for foreigners.

The June package of 176 measures committed Havana to loosening both. Direct hiring came first for foreign-invested firms under the revised Decree 325; commercial branches are a separate legal category, so they needed their own amendment.

US sanctions on Cuba's medical missions attack the same intermediary model as forced labour, which gives Havana a reason to show direct hiring exists outside the missions.

What could happen next?

Opportunity
Foreign suppliers already present in Cuba could sell directly to private Cuban firms, cutting out the state importer's margin.
Risk
Without reliable hard-currency payment through Cuban banks, branches may decline to stock goods for wholesale.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Vietnam let wholly foreign-owned firms run wholesale and retail distribution from 1 January 2009 under its World Trade Organization commitments. State trading firms lost their role as compulsory intermediaries, and foreign distributors expanded quickly once they could hire and sell on their own account.

Counter-parallel: At the Kaesong Industrial Complex, run from 2004 to 2016, South Korean firms paid North Korean workers' wages to a state agency, never to the workers. Seoul shut the zone in February 2016, and the intermediary model left no direct employer link to build on.

Immediate effect: no firm has been named as hiring directly, and the vice-minister spoke of projects under evaluation, so the change has no measured effect yet. MINCEX's separate online window lets Cuban companies apply for import and export authorisation without a state intermediary.

Structural effect: if foreign branches can distribute wholesale, the margin the state importer used to keep moves to the foreign seller or to the Cuban buyer. That shift matters most for food and inputs that Cuban private firms now buy in hard currency at an informal dollar near record highs.

Consensus view: Economists at the University of Havana's Centro de Estudios de la Economía Cubana (CEEC) have argued for direct hiring and direct distribution for more than a decade. Their mechanism: a state importer that takes goods at the dock adds a margin and a delay to every sale, and a state employment agency that stands between a foreign firm and its staff keeps part of the wage, so removing both should cut prices and raise take-home pay.

Counter-view: Carmelo Mesa-Lago of the University of Pittsburgh, a long-time student of Cuban reform, has argued that Havana opens doors in the wrong order. A foreign branch may now sell wholesale, but it still needs Cuban banks to pay its overseas suppliers in hard currency, and those banks are the bottleneck the US is squeezing.

Key tension: Whether foreign branches can collect hard currency from Cuban buyers fast enough to restock, or whether wholesale rights stay on paper for lack of payment.

Sources:Cubadebate

Mentions:Gaceta Oficial →Decree 325 →Havana →World Trade Organization →Seoul →University of Pittsburgh →Vietnam →Cuba →Déborah Rivas Saavedra →Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment (Cuba) →

First Reported In

Update #15 · Cuba opens oilfields, US cuts dollar routes

Cubadebate· 22 Oct 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Cuba lets foreign firms hire directly

Gaceta No. 82 extended direct hiring from foreign-invested firms under Decree 325 to foreign commercial branches.

Occurred 4 Sept 2026

Read story →

This Event

Cuba lets foreign branches hire Cubans

The rule removes the state importer that stood between foreign sellers and the Cuban market, though no firm has yet been named as using it.

Different Perspectives

UN General Assembly

The Assembly passed last year's resolution against the US embargo by 165 votes to 7, with 12 abstentions, and votes again on 28 October. That count is the baseline against which Havana's lobbying claims and Washington's pressure will be measured.

Mexican Navy (Secretaría de Marina)

A Mexican Navy team inspected Grace at Progreso and found fuel in its ballast tanks, according to the US Coast Guard. The account of Mexico's role comes from Washington; the Mexican government's own position on the stop is not on record in the sources reviewed.

Pedro Monreal, independent Cuban economist

Monreal says the gazette contains no rule for the exchange-house licence ADT 64 received, so nobody knows how a second firm could apply. He says a representative rate would need at least ten houses in five provinces, Havana included.

Prisoners Defenders and OCDH (Madrid-based exile monitors)

Prisoners Defenders counted a record 1,351 political prisoners at the end of September, and OCDH logged at least 344 repressive actions that month. OCDH asked the European Union on 11 September to investigate possible trafficking in Cuba's medical brigade in Italy.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier

Uthmeier announced a no-bond state warrant for Raúl Castro on 19 October over the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, after reopening the state investigation last year. The four men killed flew for a Miami exile group, and the warrant restricts Castro's travel rather than reaching him in Cuba.

Cuban government (Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla)

Rodríguez said on 21 October that Washington is pressing governments to abstain or leave the hall in the 28 October UN vote and called Florida's Raúl Castro warrant worthless. Havana is presenting its October oil and trade rules as openings and the US measures as an energy blockade.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.