Two key figures in Cuba’s current leadership Vice Presidents Miguel Díaz-Canel and Marino Murillo Jorge have insisted, both privately and publicly, that the coming months will be “crucial” in defining Cuba’s economic reforms following the implementation of the Lineamientos adopted in April 2011 at the Sixth Party Congress.

So what can we expect to happen in Cuba between now and 2018?

In a nutshell: Experimenting, drawing the best lessons and extending nationwide the decentralization and full financial and managerial autonomy of state enterprises.

Azcuba, Biopharmacuba and a few others are already working along these lines. A considerable degree of expanded autonomy from the state will follow throughout the Cuban economy starting next year.

What’s not entirely clear yet is what’ll happen to the 2,700 industries and services that have been bankrupt and dependent on loans and subsidies for  20, 30 or even 50 years. These can’t be decentralized for one simple reason: they don’t meet the standards.

Only 1,000 entities do meet those standards, according to figures disclosed in 2005 during the stage of Perfeccionamiento Empresarial.

Will the deadbeat companies be shut down, as recommended in the guidelines, or will there be a firesale of some sort?

Perhaps they’ll be turned into cooperatives to be supervised by the workers, who will decide what to do. This is just one example of the many looming questions that lie ahead.

President Raúl Castro has characterized Cuba’s dual-currency system as the economy’s “Achilles’ heel” but concedes that it’s very difficult to overcome given the economy’s current levels of unproductivity.

However, last July both Murillo and Díaz-Canel said progress is being made to move Cuba to a single-currency system.

Exchange rates have already been lowered in certain state sectors. Experts say rushing to parity too quickly would boost demand for CUC-priced goods and send prices soaring.

In this context, it’s clear that a longer-term approach is the prudent course to follow.

Those who compare Cuba to China’s experience with a dual-currency system should remember that the Chinese model was based on a currency known as renminbi or yuan for the local population, and Foreign Exchange Certificates (FECs) for foreigners. It lasted from 1980 to 1994, and as the Chinese economy grew in productivity and size, it became easier to abolish FECs.

Until only a few years ago, more than 70% of China’s GDP came from the private sector, and the country was getting $160 billion in foreign direct investment annually huge numbers even for a mammoth economy the size of China’s. Under such circumstances, the single-currency system made sense which of course is very different in scale and context compared to the Cuban economy.

But the debate over a single-currency system isn’t only about productivity, FDI or exchange rates. Salary reform is also crucial, though Cuban officials have yet to utter a single word about this.

Aside from the financial technicalities adjusting to a single-currency system would entail in terms of salaries, there’d also be significant social tensions. Murillo has said the single-currency system is “not just a technical issue” but one that implies social and political considerations as well.

For this reason, he rejects the idea of “shock therapy” solutions.

Another big question mark is that of new laws governing foreign investments. For the last two years, Raúl Castro and officials in the Ministry of Foreign Trade have insisted that a new investment law was in the making.

But other officials now say the regime is considering only amending Cuba’s existing 1995 law in order to create the necessary climate to promote foreign investment needed to create jobs and generate capital.

Various issues must be clarified if such investments are to take place especially given the recent wave of U.S. sanctions against Western European banks that conduct business with Cuba.

Meanwhile, the experimental projects involving private non-farm cooperatives will end successfully by year’s end, and by early 2014 such co-ops will pop up across Cuba as they already have in the pilot provinces of Artemisa and Mayabeque.

These, along with the rapid growth of private business in both urban and rural areas, have now pushed the non-state sector well beyond the 40% of the economy it was expected to comprise a year ago. It has also become a key source of employment nationwide.

Yet the Castro regime continues to impose restrictions that hinder progress throughout the sector.

“Reforms are well-oriented and have achieved improvements, but they face obstacles by way of excessive [state] controls and regulations as well as by high taxation,” said University of Pittsburgh economics professor Carmelo Mesa-Lago in an Aug. 28 analysis. In December 2010, Raúl Castro said taxation and the banking system would be the key elements for state regulation over the new sectors which is a good idea as long as they promote economic expansion, provide sound incentives and put an end to abuse and blackmail by state inspectors.

Any policy will require an indispensable infrastructure of supplies for farmers, small- and medium-sized industries and self-employed cuentapropistas. In this regard, Brazil, India, Costa Rica and other countries offer ample success stories that could serve as inspiration for Cuban entrepreneurs.

“The reforms are positive, but some crucial ones are missing, and those already approved are going slow and facing obstacles,” Mesa-Lago concluded in his analysis. “They are not enough to solve the accumulated problems after 54 years of socialismo real.”

Díaz-Canel took the same approach when he stated that “there is much complexity and many problems accumulated over the years.”

This is why the next five years will mark a decisive turning point in redesigning the Cuban economy. Whether the experiment succeeds remains to be seen.