By: Staff Writer
September 4, 2026
The Cuban government in a historic move will now allow Cubans living in the United States to open up businesses on the island.
Cuba’s Council of State published Decree-Law 128 on Thursday, giving foreign companies the green light to hire employees directly without going through state agencies and to open bank accounts abroad without prior authorization from the Central Bank of Cuba; it also allows private businesses to establish tourism agencies.
The new legal framework, published in the Official Gazette, is the deepest overhaul of the island’s private sector since small and medium enterprises were legalized in 2021. The country’s leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, advanced the new measures as part of a reform package he has insisted is necessary to save Cuba’s communist revolution, but should not be portrayed as “capitalist.”
Businesses with one to 10 workers are classified as microenterprises, 11 to 35 as small businesses and those with 36 to 100 as medium-sized enterprises.
Businesses employing more than 100 people will now be classified as private companies, allowing them to grow beyond the previous limit.
The measure also grants private companies and MSMEs the ability to directly import and export goods and services, although the operations require authorization from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Investment.
The new regulations also recognize private companies’ ability to associate with foreign capital, subject to existing Cuban legislation.
It took Cuban leaders a raging humanitarian crisis, the loss of its foreign patron, Venezuela, and a hostile U.S. administration threatening military action to put in place measures that appear to have been in the books for years.
In 2023, the Miami Herald reported that President Miguel Díaz-Canel told a room of Cuban American businesspeople that the Cuban government was contemplating letting Cuban Americans invest in and own businesses on the island, and was working on legislation to do it.
But then, in an example of the push-and-pull inside the government between hardliners and reformers, the government passed a decree in 2024 that further restricted ownership of private businesses to Cubans with “effective residency” on the island, a restriction eliminated by the new legislation.
The changes are part of a broader package of economic measures announced by the government this year as it seeks to address a deepening economic crisis.
Cuba has faced severe fuel shortages, prolonged power outages, shortages of essential goods and declining production, while the government has sought to increase investment and economic activity.
The government has also moved to expand the role of private businesses and improve their links with state-owned companies.
The latest measures build on the introduction of MSMEs in 2021, which marked a major expansion of private economic activity after decades of restrictions.
The government has continued to emphasize that the private sector will operate within Cuba’s socialist economic system and under state regulation.