It seems Raul Castro is making steps to get rid of the 3-tiered economy in Cuba. Basically for some time Cuba's economy has been split into 3. There was one economy for most of the citizens, based around unconvertible pesos from government set monthly salary. There has been the convertible peso economy, for Cubans who either had access to family money from abroad or who worked in tourist-related industries. And then on top of that was a dollar economy, for tourists. Aside from the money separation, there were restrictions on what most Cubans could do which prevented them from going into certain stores, staying in tourist hotels, riding some taxis, etc.
Simply lifting these restrictions isn't going to change the fact that most Cubans are very poor, but they were nonetheless a rather ugly feature of the place, making Cubans second class citizens in their own country.
