Cuba relaxes car ownership laws

(Vatican Radio) Authorities in Cuba are relaxing vehicle ownership laws, which will make the purchase and sale of motors less restricted and less complex.


The government publication Granma confirms that the Council of Ministers has scrapped the necessity of buying cars via official permission from the state. They ruled that the sale of new and used vehicles has been freed up, which means special individual permits will not be needed from now on.



The snag is that buyers will still have to purchase from state dealerships as importation remains restricted. Nonetheless, a milestone has been reached. Until 2011, only the sale of pre-1959 cars, that is, prior to the Revolution, was permitted.


This new law is the latest in a series of market-friendly reforms, gradually introduced by President Raul Castro, is treading the tricky political tightrope of long-overdue modernization, as opposed to liberalization, while still trying to retain overall control via the communist system.



Listen to the report by James Blears: