The US dollar broke a new record this Monday in the Cuban informal exchange market by quoting 400 pesos (CUP), which represents a depreciation of 1,567 % of the national currency with respect to the green ticket from the monetary reform of 2021.
This new maximum – registered by the index elaborated by the independent medium The touchreferent of the informal market -, coincides with the government process of partial dollarization of the economy, in a deep crisis for more than five years.
Independent economists emphasize that after this milestone, the CUP maintains its bearish tendency due to the complex macroeconomic situation of the country and the growing relevance of the dollar.
For its part, the official change for legal persons remains fixed in 24 CUP per dollar and the type for natural persons remains in 120 CUP per green ticket, which generates strong economic imbalances.
The Cuban Executive requires currencies to import fuel and food, mainly, at a time when traditional currency sources – tourism, remittances and export of professional services – for US sanctions and poor internal economic management are wobble.
The Government, which imports 80 % of what is consumed on the island, has dollarized in recent months a large part of its network of commercial establishments and started charging in foreign currency for some of the state services and its wide portfolio of companies.
It is a “necessary measure,” said Prime Minister Manuel Marrero, who described it as one of the key pieces of the economic recovery program, although the Executive is aware of its social consequences.
The president himself, Miguel Díaz-Canel, acknowledged in Parliament last July that dollarization has given rise to a “widening” of the “gaps that mark social inequality.”
In this regard, Cuban economist Pavel Vidal assured EFE that unlike other Latin American economies with depreciated coins with respect to the dollar, on the island that fall has not been accompanied with a salary increase adjusted to inflation.
“In Cuba we don’t have those mechanisms […] Therefore, the fact that this brand of the informal exchange rate continues to be exceeded has a much higher cost about the impoverishment of the family, ”he lamented.
In that sense, Mauricio de Miranda, professor at the Javeriana University of Cali (Colombia) and director of his Observatory on the Cuban economy, directly linked the depreciation of the CUP to the greater presence of the dollar on the island.
“To the extent that the Cuban government opens more dollar stores and the population has less alternatives in pesos to ensure their needs […]the dollar will continue to rise, ”he said in an interview with EFE.
