Cuba Faces the Region's Steepest Contraction, ECLAC Projects a 10.3% Fall

The UN's regional commission expects the Cuban economy to shrink 10.3% in 2026, the deepest decline anywhere in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean projects that Cuba's economy will contract 10.3% in 2026, the steepest fall of any country in the region. It is a figure that marks Cuba as an outlier at the bottom of the Caribbean's growth table in a year when most of the basin is expanding.

For a paper that reads the whole basin as one, Cuba's trajectory matters beyond its borders. It shapes migration pressure across the northern Caribbean, the flow of remittances, and the calculations of every government weighing its own exposure to fuel, food and foreign exchange. A contraction of this depth in one of the region's largest populations is a regional variable, not a national footnote.

Source: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC (September 10, 2026). The projection is as published by ECLAC.