The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday announced regulatory changes to allow more American financial support for Cuba’s nascent private sector and bolster access to U.S. internet-based services, modest but timely measures that officials said would help give the island’s budding small businesses a leg up. Photo: Internet Source

The U.S. said it would permit small entrepreneurs on the Communist-run island to open and access U.S. bank accounts from Cuba for the first time in decades, following prohibitions put in place shortly after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

Cuban entrepreneurs would be allowed to use U.S.-based social media platforms, online payment sites, video conferencing and authentication services, previously unavailable to the sector and a major hurdle facing small businesses on the island.

The moves aim to fulfill a long-delayed pledge by President Joe Biden’s administration to help Cuba’s budding entrepreneurs, giving its small but fast-growing private sector deference despite the Cold War-era U.S. embargo that has for decades complicated financial transactions by the Cuban government.

“Today we’re taking an important step to support the expansion of free enterprise and the expansion of the entrepreneurial business sector in Cuba,” a senior U.S. official told reporters.

Johana Tablada, Cuba’s deputy director of U.S. affairs, told reporters late on Tuesday that an initial read suggested the measures to be “very limited” and difficult to implement.

The U.S. has designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, together with Syria, Iran, and North Korea, a label that further complicates financial transactions for listed nations.

“The presence of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism will probably prevent the measures announced today from becoming a reality for the (private) sector that the United States government wants to favor,” she said.

But she said Cuba would not stand in the way of the measures aimed at bolstering the private sector.

U.S. officials, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, signaled they had sought to balance the goal of bolstering the private sector with a desire to avoid benefit to Cuban authorities.

The measures would exclude Cuban officials, military officers and other government “insiders,” aiming to minimize resources that could benefit the Cuban government, the officials said.

The U.S. officials declined to say whether the administration was conducting a formal review of Cuba’s continuing presence on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Republican U.S. Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American lawmaker from South Florida, quickly criticized the Democratic administration’s announcement.