Some Wholesale Items Go On Sale In Cuba

A classic American car that is used as a taxi passes by the entrance of a private movie theater called "3D Mania" in Havana, Cuba, Monday, Oct. 28, 2013. Cuban entrepreneurs have quietly opened dozens of backroom video salons over the last year, seizing on ambiguities in licensing laws to transform cafes and childrenâs entertainment parlors into a new breed of private business unforeseen by recent official openings in the communist economy. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes) (AP2013)

More than a dozen Cuban state-run businesses have been authorized to begin selling their goods wholesale to selected buyers.

A new resolution from the Economy and Planning Ministry says legally registered entities will be able to purchase products including barbed wire, cement, chemicals, aluminum sheets, leather and bus parts.

The measure seems geared toward fledgling independent, non-agricultural cooperatives that are operating in construction, textiles and transport, among other areas.

It apparently does not apply to the more than 460,000 private-sector workers and small-business owners, many of whom say a lack of wholesale access makes it tough to do business.

Details were published Friday in the government's Official Gazette.

Cuba is in the midst of a limited expansion of non-state economic activity that began in 2010.