HAVANA: The Cuban government plans to shake up two underperforming ministries and broaden a project to turn state businesses over to employee cooperatives, state television reported.
The Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Informatics and Communications needed reorganizing, it said on Wednesday night.
The changes, said to have been discussed at the Council of Ministers on Saturday, are part of wide-ranging reforms initiated by President Raul Castro.
He is encouraging the growth of Cuba's private sector and reducing the size and role of government in the Caribbean island's cash-strapped Soviet-style system.
Cuban television said Marino Murillo, the architect of the reforms, described the Ministry of Agriculture as having been in an "unfavorable economic-financial state for several years" and that actions it had taken to date "had been insufficient to turn it around."
President Castro has implemented reforms in agriculture, including the leasing of land to private farmers, to try to boost food output, but progress has been slow and Cuba is still heavily dependent on budget-draining food imports.
FIRST STEP
The council, which functions as the government cabinet under the ruling Council of State, also held early-stage discussions on giving greater autonomy for companies linked to the Ministry of Informatics and Communications - another Castro reform.
President Castro, who heads both the Council of State and Council of Ministers, previously eliminated the once-powerful Sugar Ministry and created the Ministry of Energy and Ministry of Mining.
He also has replaced numerous ministers appointed by older brother Fidel Castro before he stepped down due to age and illness in February 2008 after ruling Cuba for 49 years.
Cuban television reported that Murillo said "an experiment" to create more employee cooperatives to run state businesses as if they were their own had been approved.
Such cooperatives, where the government retains ownership but not management of the facilities, are already in place in businesses such as barber shops and beauty salons and are being trialled in state-owned restaurants in some areas.
The government hopes the cooperatives will improve the service quality and trim its bloated payrolls.
One of Castro's reforms is to cut a million state jobs - or about 20 percent of Cuba's workforce - by 2015, and he has encouraged more self-employment to absorb laid-off workers.
"The work we have ahead is gigantic," Castro was quoted as saying.
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