Cuba moves toward wholesale for small businesses

Posted on Friday, 03.08.13

Cuba moves toward wholesale for small businesses
The Associated Press

HAVANA -- Cuba is reorganizing a state-run wholesale supplier and
directing it to also work with private entrepreneurs and independent
cooperatives.

The recent government resolution is a step toward providing better
access to wholesale supplies, one of the biggest needs expressed by
Cuba's more than 400,000 private-sector workers.

Analysts have called the lack of access a major impediment to the
island's budding entrepreneurial class.

Small businesses have had to purchase supplies at retail or rely on
"mules," who fly goods in from other countries in overstuffed suitcases.

The resolution says the wholesale entity will offer everything from
foodstuffs to computers. It apparently will begin operating sometime in
the second quarter of this year.

Cuba is in the process of remaking its socialist economic model with a
dollop of private-sector activity.

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