This Friday, the Cuban Government dismissed Alejandro Gil from the positions of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Planning, at a time of crisis and plans that seek to oxygenate a devastated economy.
An official statement ensures that Gil, 60, is released "from his responsibilities."
The dismissal occurs at the proposal of President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and the approval of the members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.
From now on, Joaquín Alonso Vázquez, 60 years old, current minister-president of the Central Bank of Cuba, will occupy the position of Minister of Economy and Planning.
Graduated in Transportation Operations Engineering, Gil, who worked as a ship manager, head of port operations, and in companies inside and outside the country, first held the position of vice minister and first deputy minister of the Ministry of Finance and Prices, and in 2018 He was promoted to the position of Minister of Economy after the dismissal of Ricardo Cabrisas.
Since then, he has been at the forefront of the failed plans to recover the Cuban economy in recent years, including the so-called "Ordering Task" of 2021, which promised to free the country from economic stagnation with the end of the double currency and a reform of prices, and that the Government has just recognized that it was a failure, after resulting in an increase in inflation and the acceleration of the state of crisis.
Alejandro Gil, Minister of Economy.Reuters
Gil has also been in charge of announcing to the people of Cuba almost all of their latest misfortunes: in September he appeared on national television to assume that the economy was in “a complex situation,” and to recognize the shortage of basic foods such as milk for children. , bread, coffee or pork.
He was in charge of saying publicly that the basic basket, the series of subsidized foods that the Government distributes to Cuban households on a monthly basis and that are increasingly scarce, is “a distortion that we have to correct,” and that the Government He barely has foreign currency to buy these foods.
He was also responsible for announcing the evident deterioration of the Cuban economy in 2023, with data only compared to the so-called crisis of the Special Period of the 1990s: an economy that contracted 2% despite having projected a growth of 3%. and inflation that is close to 30%.
Even so, Gil has not hesitated to ask the people of Cuba for patience and confidence in the possibilities of the Revolution: “We know that life is hard,” he insisted recently.
“But trust, that the only way out is revolution and socialism.”
Despite the fact that at the end of the year the Government announced a package of measures that outraged the Cuban family and that involves raising gasoline prices by more than 500%, now, suddenly, it has said that it will delay the price increase of fuel due to “a cybersecurity attack on the CIMEX marketing system” which was caused “by a virus coming from abroad,” according to an official journalist.
In the midst of these measures that are taken, delayed or discarded, the Cuban Executive dismisses Gil, who is, according to his own sister, the television presenter María Victoria Gil, the person “most hated” by the Cuban people along with to Miguel Díaz-Canel and Prime Minister Manuel Marrero.
“He is the most hated person.
There are Alejandro Gil, Marrero and Canel, in that order,” said María Victoria in an interview in 2022 for the YouTube channel El mundo de Darwin.
On that occasion she said that her brother, who lived in England with his family, enjoyed certain luxuries not allowed for the majority in Cuba.
According to María Victoria, Gil is one of the people who, if there is a change of Government on the island, “will have to leave Cuba” immediately.
For the moment, the former minister has not commented on his dismissal.
This Friday the Cuban Government also removed Elba Rosa Pérez Montoya, Minister of Science, and Manuel Santiago Sobrino Martínez, Minister of the Food Industry, from their positions.
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