The US dollar (USD) reached this Monday the barrier of 200 Cuban pesos (CUP) in the informal market, an unprecedented exchange rate on the island.
This negative limit takes place in the midst of the severe economic crisis that the Island is going through and when the country tries to recover from the devastating effects of the Hurricane Ianwhich hit western Cuba hard, and after a breakdown that left electricity generation at zero.
Meanwhile, the euro stood at 198 CUP and the virtual currency of the Cuban Government, the Freely Convertible Currency (MLC), reached 195 CUP, according to the index published by the independent media The touchquoted by the agency EFE.
This index, recalls the agency, is based on a system that follows transactions on various digital platforms and web pages, and is used as a reference by economists and the population in general.
In comparison, just a year ago the dollar was at 65 CUP in the informal market and this August 1, at 115 CUP, according to the Spanish media, according to which experts consulted estimate that the depreciation will continue to deepen in the coming weeks and months. for various reasons, from the economic crisis that the country is going through to the current migratory wave, in which Cubans are looking for dollars to travel to the United States.
Economists also point to the effects on this increase of a series of measures taken by the Cuban government, from the monetary reform of the so-called Ordering taskfrom early 2021, to the recent establishment of a limited official foreign exchange market.
At the beginning of August, the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil, announced that the State would buy foreign currencies from natural persons, a measure designed to capture foreign currency in a scenario of crisis in tourism, which is a fundamental sector for the Cuban economy. Then an exchange rate five times higher than the official one was announced —24 CUP per dollar—, setting a level similar to that of the informal market at that time, around 120 CUP.
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Twenty days later, Gil made another announcement: the government would also sell foreign currency, albeit with limitations. The goal, he explained, quoted by EFEwas to strengthen the peso and gradually displace the buying and selling of dollars on the street, something that in practice has not happened, but the effect has been the opposite.
In this regard, Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, associate professor at the Javeriana University in Cali (Colombia), told the Spanish agency that “there is a total lack of credibility in the Cuban peso and there are no monetary policies to reverse the situation.”
Furthermore, according to EFEexperts consulted by the agency agreed that the dollar will continue to rise in the short term, so for now it is difficult to predict how far its value could go in the island’s informal market as long as the conditions that favor its rise are maintained. .
EFE / OnCuba
