Cuban President Raul Castro vowed to promote a "systematic rejuvenation" of senior government positions, with term limits of 10 years in ministries and the party leadership, dpa reported.
The 79-year-old president's proposal came in a speech at the weekend congress of the island's Communist Party, which he said lacked "a reserve of properly qualified substitutes."
"It is recommended that the exercise of key political and state offices be limited to two consecutive periods of five years," he told the first full party congress in 14 years, convened to debate the proposed modernization of Cuba's socialist economic model.
He said term limits "are possible and necessary in the current circumstances, which are distinct from those of the first decades of the revolution that was under constant threat and aggression."
The one-party state's political leadership has a median age of 70.
Castro said the reforms should be made over the next five years "without hurry or improvisation, but to begin as soon as the congress concludes."
The four-day session will discuss a host of proposed economic reforms to reduce state spending, promote small private enterprise and some private ownership of property.
Castro said the party had ignored the failures of its economic model for too long, and must make hard decisions to survive.
The proposals include slashing hundreds of thousands of state jobs and eliminating the ration book for basic foodstuffs, a cornerstone of Cuban communism that Castro acknowledged had become "an unbearable burden for the state and a disincentive to work."
But the president insisted that concentration of property would not be allowed, and that food rations would be maintained for the most needy.
The congress coincides with the 50th anniversary of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of exiles trained and funded by the US government to overthrow the revolutionary government.