Few understand what can be achieved by a socialist society, blockaded and with limited resources, which, despite its far from deep pockets, devotes an average of 50% of its annual budget for expenses and investment to public health and education – a percentage that can skyrocket with the appearance of a contingency like the current epidemic which is threatening the lives of our people.
This humanistic budgetary approach, the basis of national action, has other revealing characteristics, reported recently on the Mesa Redonda television program, by Cuban Minister of Finances and Prices Meisi Bolaños Weiss, who noted that more than 900 million pesos have been spent, through the end of August, to address the impact of the pandemic, the largest portion of the state budget devoted to any one area.
Bolaños reported that these funds were used to cover the cost of special care for COVID-19 patients in hospitals and others quarantined in more than 100 isolation centers, in addition to guaranteeing the implementation of hygienic-sanitary measures and many other efforts associated with the health and lives of Cubans.
The country’s strategy in confronting the health emergency also included covering the salaries of working mothers who need to stay home to care for small children, she recalled.
It is clear that such government protection could not be improvised, or maintained solely on the basis of goodwill, but rather implies the freeing of resources and large amounts of money, under the difficult conditions created by situation the country is experiencing, the Minister noted.
Concrete contributions needed to support this tremendous effort, she emphasized, include increasing discipline and productivity in the state and non-state sectors of the economy; being more efficient, diversifying exports, and consolidating incentives in place to make more progress in expanding foreign trade.
This is the urgent need to which the country calls us, to support, with productive, efficient work, the humanist vocation that is saving our lives.
