Havana/The Cuban government extended for four more months, until January 31, the tariff exemption to food, medicines, cleaning articles and electric plants that enter the country without commercial purposes, the state press reported this Saturday. The regulations had already been extended once this year, the last April.
According to the Official Gazette“Limitations in food offers and other products in the country persist” that initially led to the exemption of customs taxes on essential products. However, the text blames the “resurgence of the economic, financial and commercial blockade and the impact on the economic sphere of the measures taken during the confrontation of the COVID-19 and for the gradual recovery of the country.”
The limit of customs value is maintained, from 200 to 500 US dollars, for imports that people make by shipments
The regulations entered into force in 2021 and since then it has been postponed several times and maintains the limit of customs value – of 200 to 500 US dollars – for imports that people make by shipments. As for those who are taken to the island by the travelers themselves, the authorities remember that the articles must be presented to customs by natural persons in separate packages of personal luggage to be able to receive the tariff benefit.
According to a report from the official press published at the beginning of the year, in 2024 118 infractions of “people who use these profit and not to satisfy personal and family consumption were recorded”, a warning that Customs launched again this Friday. This 2025, at the close of the first quarter of the year, the figure already ascended to 104, with 8,978 kilograms of confiscated inputs between medicines, food and cleaning.
The importation of food and drug limits was a measure adopted after the anti -government protests of July 11, 2021 that had among their main causes the shortage of basic products and the prolonged cuts of electricity.
