According to the Carter Center, the former President's trip to Cuba (at the invitation of dictator Raul Castro) is to "learn about new economic policies and the upcoming Party Congress."
So here's lesson #1.
Despite a great deal of media speculation, exaggeration and misreporting -- there is no private sector in Cuba.
From the Business Dictionary:
Private Sector - Part of national economy made up of, and resources owned by, private enterprises. It includes the personal sector (households) and corporate sector (firms), and is responsible for allocating most of the resources within an economy.
Yet here are the Castro regime's General Guidelines (so-called "reforms") to be approved at the much-lauded VI Congress of the Cuban Communist Party ("PCC"):
I. Economic management model
1. The socialist planning system will continue to be the principal means to direct the national economy and must in turn be transformed in its methodological and organizational aspects to accommodate new forms of management and guidance of the national economy.
2. The management model must recognize and stimulate — along with the socialist state enterprises, which are the principal form of the national economy — mixed capital enterprises, cooperatives, lessors of state-owned land in usufruct, lessors of state facilities, self-employed workers and other forms which may contribute to increasing the efficiency of social labor.
3. In the new forms of non-state management, the concentration of ownership in legal or natural entities shall not be permitted.
Now, let's review:
The Cuban people -- whether before or after the VI PCC Congress -- are not allowed to own any business (small or large).
Thus, there are no small (private) businesses in Cuba, either.
All that Castro's Guidelines allow are "leasing" (facilities) and "licensing" (the ability to perform one of 178 specific tasks) from the state (which remains totalitarian -- owns everything).
That is not a private sector by any definition.
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