The Constitution and socialist ideology make any investment in Cuba a suicidal endeavor.

In November, during the Havana International Fair (FIHAV), Cuba's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, presented a package of measures to “flexibilize and boost” foreign investment, which in reality is more of a trap for the gullible than a real incentive. The measures, which were presented as a decisive shift in the country's economic policy and have made headlines in the media both inside and outside Cuba, include monetary flexibility, simplification of procedures, authorization to operate in foreign currency, and expansion of wholesale activities. However, the official narrative hides a reality that all potential investors must take into account: the major obstacle to foreign investment in Cuba is the Constitution of the Republic. Political supremacy over the law The Cuban Constitution enshrines the subordination of economic law to the ideological objectives of the regime. Article 8 establishes that international treaties are part of the national legal system but are subordinate to the Constitution, which takes precedence over them. This means that no investment protection, international arbitration, or property guarantee treaty can prevail over a state decision based on the constitutional text. From an investor's perspective, this nullifies the real value of international commitments: the state reserves the final say, constitutionally. Article 19 reinforces this logic by declaring that socialist planning is the central component of Cuba's economic system and is responsible for “projecting and guiding” development. In practical terms, this means that private investment does not respond to market signals or the logic of risk and profitability, but rather to its compatibility with politically defined plans. The investor does not decide; he is tolerated as long as he fits in. Even more explicit is Article 30, which subjects the concentration of private property to state regulation and limits defined by “socialist values.” This precept makes property rights conditional, reversible, and politically assessable, incompatible with the minimum standards of legal certainty required by foreign investment. There is no full ownership; there is provisional ownership. Executive control and absence of real checks and balances Added to this constitutional framework is a highly centralized institutional design, reinforced by regulations such as Decree 366 2019 “On non-agricultural cooperatives,” which concentrates the approval and evaluation of foreign investment in central executive bodies, structurally excluding territorial, business, and social actors. The executive branch not only regulates: it decides, evaluates, approves, modifies, and, ultimately, can reverse the conditions under which an investor operates. There are no independent review mechanisms or effective appeals when the conflict involves state interests. The announced decentralization is mere rhetoric. The new measures do not alter this scheme. Reducing red tape or allowing foreign currency accounts does not compensate for the fact that the entire investment cycle depends on discretionary political decisions, without external controls or stable rules. A tangible example of the lack of security for investments in Cuba and the lack of protection for investors against Havana's decisions is the “corralito” imposed on the bank accounts of foreign companies in Cuba and the repatriation of their profits. This model, which began with a group of companies in the first half of 2025, was expanded to all companies in November. A judicial system without effective independence As if none of the above were enough to alert them, there is a third danger for foreign investors in Cuba, and that is the absence of an independent judiciary. In Cuba, the judicial system does not act as a neutral arbiter, but as a functional part of the state apparatus. For an investor, this means that contracts are not protected from political power, disputes are not resolved on equal terms, and the risk of financial loss cannot be mitigated through domestic legal remedies. No administrative flexibility can compensate for the lack of jurisdictional certainty. Without independent judges, there can be no sustainable investment. Why the new measures do not change the equation for foreign investment in Cuba The measures announced may marginally improve the operability of existing projects or attract high-risk, opportunistic, or politically aligned capital. But they do not change the structural perception of the country for institutional, productive, and long-term investors. The problem is not technical, it is systemic. What is lacking is not incentives, but rights. The main obstacle to investment projects in Cuba is not administrative slowness, but political arbitrariness; it is not opportunities that need to be increased, but structural legal certainty that needs to be strengthened. As long as the Cuban Constitution limits property rights, central planning prevails over private initiative, and the judiciary lacks independence from the executive branch, investing in Cuba will remain a suicidal practice. Therefore, the country will only be able to attract exceptional, conditional, and essentially precarious investment. The new measures and the fallacy of impact The announced measures may marginally improve the operability of existing projects or attract high-risk, opportunistic, or politically aligned capital. But they do not change the structural conditions that determine investor confidence. Presenting the new measures as a substantive change is a fallacy. These are tactical adjustments to a system that remains strategically closed to autonomous private capital. Cuba is not facing a crisis of incentives, but rather a crisis of institutional model.