Communist Cuba announced on Tuesday it will legalize small and medium-sized private businesses.

Cuban business owners and economic experts said they were hopeful the reform would allow private firms to import wholesale supplies and export products to other countries for the first time, removing a major obstacle to private business growth.

"This is a tremendously important step," said Alfonso Valentin Larrea Barroso, director-general of an economic consulting firm in Havana. "They're creating, legally speaking, the non-state sector of the economy. They're making that sector official."

The government has regularly cracked down on private businesses that flourish and compete with Cuba's chronically inefficient state monopolies. The latest backlash came after President Barack Obama met private business owners during his March 20-22 visit to Cuba, prompting hard-line communists to warn that the U.S. wants to turn entrepreneurs into a tool to overturn the island's socialist revolution.

The Communist Party said that small, micro, and mid-sized businesses were being added to the economic development plan and approved by the Cuban Communist Party Congress.

The 32-page party document published Tuesday is the first comprehensive accounting of the decisions taken by the party congress, which was closed to the public and international press. State media reported few details of the debate or decisions taken at the meeting but featured harsh rhetoric from leading officials about the continuing threat from U.S. imperialism and the dangers of international capitalism.

"Private property in certain means of production contributes to employment, economic efficiency and well-being, in a context in which socialist property relationships predominate," reads one section of the "Conceptualization of the Cuban Economic and Social Model of Socialist Development."

Currently, Cuba allows some private enterprise by self-employed workers such as hairdresser or restaurant owner.

The AP writes, "The latest change will almost certainly take months to become law. Such reforms typically require formal approval by Cuba's National Assembly, which meets only twice a year."