Despite not a few rumors and speculations about his imminent death, the MLC will remain alive for now, Cuban authorities confirmed on Wednesday.
Even when it is maintained with artificial breathing due to the visible decrease in goods at your fingertips and their loss of prominence in the middle of dollarization Driven by the Government, the electronic currency will remain operational on the island and its bank accounts will not disappear.
The news was confirmed by Alberto Javier Quiñones Betancourt, vice president of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC), during the RadioTelevisive program Round tablededicated to the movie theme of dollarization.
The Government defends dollarization as “a necessary process”, with the mlc in mince
To clear doubts in the population, the manager – if he said that there is “a large part of the currency running today outside the banking system” – he guaranteed that as part of the government measures to organize the complex monetary panorama of the country “the accounts called In MLC that customers have today in the banks they do not disappear. ”
“These accounts called in MLC and the commitment of the banks are maintained in the obligations with their clients, based on the funds they have represented or the funds they may have in the future,” he explained.
“Even the cards associated with MLC accounts maintain their operation on the network designed to operate, and banks, as part of their options and works, will continue to seek alternatives to expand their facilities and uses,” he added.
Quiñones Betancourt asked citizens confidence in the banking and financial system regarding customers with this type of cards ”, which will continue to be fully valid.
Dollars to cash…welcome
After the country took almost forced banking since its implementation as of August 2023, the official now defended the client’s freedom to pay in the modality that best serves him, either through cards such as classic, which encodes currencies, or With US dollars in hand.
“When these digital mechanisms have been enabled, including the classic, closely linked to servicenters with foreign exchange, and there are a banking process in the country, why now accept the possibility that people buy directly with the dollar in cash? ”, asked the BCC manager.
“We intend to be the client who chooses the best means of paying to use. For certain reasons, at certain times, the dollar has had to be regulated and contexts will always be different in time, ”he justified.
Birth and decline of a digital currency
Introduced at the end of 2019, the MLC was then validated as “the most practical mechanism” to capture currencies through remittances through the retail network, according to the then Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil Fernández, dismissed in February 2023 and subject to a criminal process that nothing is known.
In February 2022, Gil Fernández arrived at say that “if there have not been stores in freely convertible currencies (MLC), the country’s economic situation would be even more complex, and also much less sales in weights of goods and services to the population, given the high shortage of the commercial network” .
In October 2021, before the National Assembly of Popular Power, the then Vice Chief of the Cabinet said that more than 300 million dollars had been used to provide merchandise to provide merchandise the network of trade in national currency ”, for which It should be asked what the scenario would not have enabled these stores, despite the limitations that are generated, ”he asked.
However, in recent times, MLC stores accused an permanent shortage and their quotation in the street stock market reflected such decline in the offer of goods and services, yielding more power in the face They support purchases in foreign markets in the private sector.
Oscar Fernández: “In Cuba they should focus more on progress and not on control”
Is there backup support?
“MLC accounts are without support,” said Cuban economist, professor and businessman Oscar Fernández, in an interview with On Cuba News last September.
For his part, another Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, said that both the CUC, the CL (liquidity capacity), the unique income account of the State and the currency approval committees, the MLC and the partial dollarization in its different stages have It has been a failure, because the problems and imbalances in the background of the economy are not addressed.
“They have been used to put patches, segment, avoid reforms and correction of the official exchange rate. They are monetary mechanisms to continue extracting income and try to keep countless inefficient state companies that do not contribute to the development of the country, ”Vidal explained in January to the platform Eltoque.
