Cuba lifts ban on most private business

Cuba has announced a big expansion of the private sector as the communist government struggles to deal with the worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Only weeks after devaluing the peso and scrapping a dual currency system, president Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government said at the weekend it would open up most of the economy to private businesses. 

Labour minister Marta Elena Feito Cabrera said instead of allowing private participation in 127 professions, the government would permit it in more than 2,000, reserving only 124 areas partly or wholly for the state. She did not specify which. ..