22OCT

Cuba's private-bank law, no licence yet

2 min read

17:12UTC

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.

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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 approval⁠¹. 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

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Immediately, the absence of a licence keeps remittance and dollar flows routed through informal banqueros and CADECA rather than any new private channel, since there is nothing yet to license into.

Structurally, the reform commits to moving the peso from its official 555 rate toward the informal rate, which sat at 670 on 1 July; a private banking sector was meant to help absorb that devaluation, and its absence leaves informal exchange houses as the only price-discovery mechanism in the meantime.

Consensus view: CEDA's Tamarys Bahamonde argues a two-week gap between the 18 June reform and a first licence is unremarkable, since the Banco Central de Cuba has never run a private-bank licensing round before and has no template to draw on.

Counter-view: Morrison Foerster's sanctions client alert reads the delay as structural rather than administrative: any bank licensed under the reform would still need a foreign-currency correspondent route, and OFAC's 23 June designation of BFI removed the one that existed six days after the reform passed.

Key tension: Whether Havana is simply drafting slowly or has legalised a banking sector with no viable foreign-currency plumbing to plug into.

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

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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

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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

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.