A Madrid-based investment promotion group tells CubaNews it wants to get more involved with the Cuban economy by helping supply the island’s emerging small-business sector, including the so-called cuentapropistas.

For several years, Consorcio Europa-Cuba Comercio Exterior (CECCE) has successfully drawn in various Spanish entities to Cuba. These range from tourism companies, to firms that supply concrete and construction materials as well as machinery and auto parts.

Miguel de los Mozos, CECCE’s manager, sees room for improvement in the Cuban economy as a consequence of President Raúl Castro’s reforms.

De los Mozos told us that Cuba’s wholesale sector must be widened further than what the regime’s authorities have allowed so far. He’s like to see small businesses be able to sell goods other than fruits and vegetables including packaged food products normally found in supermarkets and convenience stories in other countries.

But that would call for the government to relinquish its monopoly over the island’s retail “dollar store” sector which it has traditionally controlled since those stores are a guaranteed source of hard currency.

The entrepreneur said Spanish food exporters should supply the island once Cuba’s re-tail sector is restructured to allow it.

“One of the problems for the cuentapropistas [and small businesses] is obviously the difficulty in their getting supplies for their sales,” he said.  “Although companies from Spain and the rest of the European Union can export their products to Cuba, this process [distribution of imported food items] is done through Alimport and not directly by the buyers. That limits efficiency and the capacity to sell.

“The creation of distribution centers and supply chains [for imported food] already exists in Europe and can work in Cuba. This know-how is something we can contribute.”

So far, the Cuban government has not touched this sacred cow within the commercial sector that it controls, and it remains to be seen whether Havana will ever take that step.

If Raúl Castro is somehow convinced to do this, it could mean the elimination of state-run Alimport. In that case, a number of small businesses would certainly be created to run convenience stores, selling soft drinks, beer, snack foods, as well as packaged and canned grocery items whether they’re domestically produced or imported.

One Spanish company that may not want to see this happen is Vima Foods of Coruña. Vima has long supplied Cuba’s hard-currency shops with its canned and bottled products such as ketchup and mustard. It’s also sold food service items to the tourism sector. Opening the market to rival Spanish food suppliers would mean unprecedented competition.

Eventually, competition could come from the United States as well. U.S. companies, including those based in South Florida, that already ship to the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and elsewhere would vie for such a restructured market, with Cuban-American entrepreneurs likely to exploit their local connections to command more of that market.

Even so, de los Mozos insists that changes are necessary and urgent.

“Whatever reforms permit the Cuban people’s economic and social development will always be good,” he said. “What’s important is that these reforms will permit the promotion of wealth, the fruit of labor, and responsibility for Cubans. We believe that these initial changes must continue.”