Decreto 160/2026 entered into force on Tuesday 4 August. Issued by Cuba's Consejo de Ministros (the Council of Ministers) and published in the Gaceta Oficial, Cuba's official government gazette, No. 62 Ordinaria (GOC-2026-412-O62) on 28 July, it repeals Decreto 107/2024 and the flat list of 125 activities that decree closed to private business.1
Four categories replace the single list. Absolute prohibitions on security grounds cover explosives, currency and document counterfeiting, weapons manufacture and repair, gambling and protected-species fishing. A second category reserves activities to the state. A third bars activities to individual cuentapropistas, the self-employed, while leaving them open to mipymes (micro, small and medium private enterprises), private companies and cooperatives. A fourth requires a prior licence or certification. Outlets that have read the decree count 46 activities de-listed outright and 35 more relaxed in their operating conditions.2 The default rule flips: any lawful activity not named in the annex is presumed permitted, where before anything unlisted was prohibited. That moves the burden of proof from the applicant to the inspector, which changes daily enforcement more than the de-listings do. The Consejo de Ministros must now revisit the list at least every two years.
Set against the 176-measure reform the National Assembly passed on 18 June, which authorised private banks and dollar accounts without forced conversion into pesos, this is a further opening rather than a retrenchment. Decreto 160 reached the Gaceta Oficial six weeks after that vote. The instrument with teeth has not appeared: no private-bank or exchange-house licence had been issued by 1 July, and none has been issued since. El Toque and OnCubaNews both report Cubans doubting the practical effect for exactly that reason, against a backdrop of blackouts, fuel shortages and inflation.3 A newly legal business still banks through the state and still buys its foreign currency at whatever rate the informal market sets that week.
Formal education, medical practice, mass media and trade-union activity stay closed to the private sector under every category. The president of Cuba's state Institute for Non-State Economic Actors called the decree "para el bienestar de la población", for the population's welfare, while stating that state enterprises retain their "papel fundamental".4 The counter-reading deserves a hearing. A government that de-lists 46 activities and binds itself to a biennial review is behaving like one trying to make its private sector work, not one performing reform for an audience.
