Cuba’s economy was in a terrible place to face a crisis like the one that is causing the war in ukraine, started by the Russian invasion almost four months ago. It is one of the data that emerges from the last report published, this Monday, by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Repercussions in Latin America and the Caribbean of the war in Ukraine: how to face this new crisis? specifically, on food import dependency in 2019.
That year, highlights the Cuban economist Peter Montreal In its Twitter account, the Island had “the third highest relative level of food imports (29.7%), three times higher than the regional average”, behind the Bahamas and Haiti and ahead of Venezuela. This figure, continues the specialist, “indicates high vulnerability in conditions of rising prices and supply instability, as is the case today.”
Another negative ECLAC index highlighted by Monreal in your comments is the one that concerns renewable energies: “In 2020, Cuba was one of the countries in the region that lagged behind in the use of renewable sources in electricity generation,” writes the economist, who attaches a graph where it is observed that the island it is only ahead of Grenada and Guyana.
The effects of the war in Ukraine, mainly the increase in energy and food prices, must be analyzed for Latin America, says ECLAC in its report, within the framework of almost twenty years of “external shocks” that, despite having different signs and intensities from one country to another, “investment and production conditions in the region have deteriorated in a context of persistent uncertainty, generally growing.”
The organization highlights the international financial crisis of 2008, that of China in 2017 and the global pandemic of covid-19 in 2020 among those “external shocks”, which, ECLAC continues, “have resulted in changes that have fed back, have weakened globalization as the engine of growth and have led geopolitical reasons to prevail over efficiency reasons”.
“For whatever reason, they have charged me 140 pesos for this mango, which they had hidden behind the platform, at a much more expensive price than what was indicated on the tablet”
In any case, those effects will generate an increase in poverty on the continent up to 33.7% and extreme poverty up to 14.9% this 2022, which reflects an increase of 1.6% and 1.1% compared to 2021, respectively. Or put another way: 7.8 million Latin Americans will join the 86.4 million “whose food security is already at risk.”
Cubans, in any case, do not need reports to know that they suffer from food inflation and energy shortages because they are the main problems that they have suffered daily for a long time, long before the conflict in Europe began.
This Tuesday, without going any further, the queues returned to the service centers in Havana. On the other hand, in the markets of the capital, it was not uncommon to hear complaints from customers about the high prices and poor quality of fruit and vegetables.
“The onions are almost rotten and they are selling them for 130 pesos a pound,” lamented a woman from Havana in the market on 17th and K, in El Vedado. “I don’t know what this self-confidence is due to, if it’s a problem with the rains or what, because last week it wasn’t like that.”
Another young man added, showing a large and overripe piece: “For whatever reason, they have charged me 140 pesos for this mango, which they had hidden behind the platform, at a much more expensive price than what was indicated on the tablet.”
But if something goes lost For days it has been animal meat, both in the capital and in cities such as Santiago de Cuba or Sancti Spíritus. About US chicken exports to Cuba, Monreal underlinesalso this Tuesday, that last April they registered a fall “of approximately 30%”, which would explain, in his opinion, “the abrupt greater shortage of the product observed in May 2022”.
The popularly called “three P’s”: chicken, hot dog and mincemeat, which are the main proteins that Cubans manage to put on their plates, experience many oscillations in supplies and, according to the new sales calendar implemented in Havana, a family could only reach one of these products once a month.
Faced with the deficit, recipes for “forms”, “additions” and mixtures to stretch meat products are multiplying, but this creativity also faces other problems. The wheat flour that has traditionally been used to make croquettes, hamburgers or meatballs, which help to lengthen the protein, is also missing, and the vegetable oil to fry them has become a luxury product for many households.
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