Cuba's government plans to boost agricultural output by cutting down on red tape, the official daily Juventud Rebelde (JR) reported here Tuesday.

A new government decree that goes into effect August 1 aims to increase the output of Cuba's cooperatives, known here as Basic Units of Cooperative Production or UBPCs, by recognizing their legal status and removing current state restrictions that regulate their sales and services.

Before the decree takes effect, JR reported, UBPC directors will be given lectures on how the new regulations will work, as well as on economic issues like planning, financing, legal matters, contract relations, administration and direction.

According to Julio Garcia Roque, an official from the Ministry of Agriculture, the government undertook a study of the country's 1,889 cooperatives prior to designing the new regulations to boost agricultural productivity.

Involved in the study were the ministries of Finance and Prices and of Economy and Planning, as well as Cuba's national bank, the Agricultural Union and the sugar industry group Azcuba, Roque said.

The UBPCs emerged in 1993 in an attempt to counteract the decline of Cuba's agricultural sector amid the acute economic crisis that affected the island nation following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European bloc, which had for years been Cuba's main trading partners.

The cooperatives are characterized by the communal ownership of both the agricultural inputs and outputs, but the government retains ownership of the land.

Cuban authorities recently announced the creation of cooperatives in non-agricultural sectors to encourage private sector growth as part of the modernization of the national economic model spearheaded by Cuban leader Raul Castro.