Now that Cubans are allowed to buy and sell their own homes, President Raul Castro wants to lift restrictions on private housing construction, the official newspaper Granma said Thursday.

"We've already said it on several occasions: the solution is not to prohibit construction, but to indicate where and how to do it," Castro was quoted as telling his council of ministers.

Castro lifted a ban on buying or selling private homes in April 2011 as part of a series of reforms of the communist country's Soviet-style economy, but Cubans still struggle with a chronic housing shortage.

Demand exceeds supply by some 500,000 units, and much of the existing housing stock is in disrepair, particularly in Havana.

A morass of red tape and bureaucratic inertia has fostered illegal fixes and corruption amid declining housing construction, which fell in 2011 to 32,540 units from 33,901 the previous year and 44,775 in 2008.