MIAMI, United States.- The Cuban regime will sell foreign currency to state and private companies, at a higher exchange rate than the official one, but below its price in the informal market, said this Saturday the Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil Fernández.
The official explained the new measure, without specifying the new monetary rate, at the extraordinary session of the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP) that concludes this Sunday in Havana.
According to a report from the official Cubadebate, the minister explained that his government does not rule out selling foreign currency to the population, although “it will not be today or tomorrow.” Meanwhile, ordinary Cubans will continue to acquire currency in the informal market at extremely high prices.
According to the Castro official, this new sale of foreign currency to state and private companies is part of the measures that will be adopted to revive the economy. Gil presented to the National Assembly a report on the behavior of the economy in the first quarter of the year and the progress of the new socioeconomic strategy.
The government is going to “gradually establish a selective exchange scheme for the sale of foreign currency to state and non-state national suppliers, agreeing with them production levels and prices for their commercialization in Cuban pesos,” he said.
Likewise, he acknowledged that “today we have a missing piece in the design: the sale of foreign currency to the population. There is a gap between the official and the informal exchange rate of 1×125”.
The monetary unification in Cuba took the CUC out of circulation and established an official exchange rate of 1 USD x 24 CUP, however, the Cuban authorities are still unable to guarantee the sale of dollars to the population.
The new measure
“It is not true, nor can we draw the conclusion a priori that the informal exchange rate is the equilibrium exchange rate of the economy. Nor do we have a reason to go out and sell foreign currency at 125 pesos. That is not the exchange rate that balances the economy,” the minister added.
“We have to manage somewhere in between,” Gil said about the decision to sell foreign currency to Cuban companies at a rate higher than the official one.
“In a selective and gradual way we have to take the steps to generate a secondary scheme”, which, he pointed out, “will be implemented in a selective and gradual way, and will be managed administratively to the extent that we can expand the entry of more actors. economic”.
“We don’t call it the foreign exchange market. This is a secondary currency allocation scheme in which it can be sold to state and non-state economic actors at an exchange rate higher than 24, but lower than the informal one, which will allow us to support productions that will later be sold to the population in national currency”, announced the official.
“There are no magic measures, nor solutions that can solve all problems at once. The speed of the recovery depends on external factors, but above all on ourselves, and the strategy is focused on that effort,” he stated.
So far, neither Minister Gil nor the government has specified when this measure will begin to be implemented, nor what the exchange rate “above 24, but below the informal rate” will be.
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