Fidel Castro has confirmed he has resigned from the top leadership of the Cuba Communist Party which has approved a raft of economic reforms.
The 84-year-old had served as first secretary in the Central Committee of the party since its creation in 1965.
Fidel Castro handed over the functions of the party head to his brother Raul because of his declining health in 2006 but had retained the first secretary title.
The sixth Communist Party Congress has approved a flurry of measures aimed at keeping Cuba's centrally planned economy from collapse, but without any broad embrace of market-oriented economic change, AFP reports.
President Raul Castro, who turns 80 in June, seems likely to officially become the party's new first secretary.
President Castro said on Saturday that he backed political term limits of 10 years at most for the top leadership spots, in a country he and his brother have led for more than five decades.
House sales allowed
Cubans will soon be able to buy and sell houses for the first time since the socialist revolution in 1959.
The change was announced by President Castro in his opening address to the party congress.
The BBC reports that for the past 50 years, Cubans have only been allowed to pass on their homes to their children or to swap them through a complicated, bureaucratic and often corrupt system.
Raul Castro did not give any details on how the new property sales could work, but warned that the concentration of property would not be allowed.
