VILLA CLARA, Cuba. — From one day to the next, in the Freely Convertible Currency stores in the city of Santa Clara, the prices of Havana Club brand beverages changed. Some time before, another series of products had suffered changes in amount: some were transferred to the “perishable” area and in others a certain increase of a few cents was perceived.
“Gouda cheese used to cost much less,” he tells CubaNet a local worker who asks for discretion about his identity. “You have to see the faces of the people when they get here and realize that for a little piece that measures a quarter they have to pay almost 20 dollars. The rum thing was a commission that indicated it in the morning and the next day the price labels had to be changed”.
Both in this store and in another adjoining one called “Praga”, also located on the boulevard, the Havana Club brand drinks were increased by 3 or 4 MLC above their previous value. For example, the Añejo especial, which used to cost 9.25, has been increased to 13, and the Añejo Reserva now costs more than 18 MLC. A caneca of Havana Club 7 years currently amounts to almost 16 MLC.
“Drinks are not food, of that we are clear, but man does not live by bread alone,” says Josué Álvarez, a member of a Villa Clara bar and in charge of supplying several similar places with this merchandise. “Now the problem is in the prices of drinks, that they will have to be raised and then people complain that they spent thousands of pesos in one night.”
Josué explains that the 3-year-old, usually used for cocktails, “has been missing for several months”, so they have had to resort to another white rum that recently came onto the market baptized Havana Club “Profundo”, whose price exceeds 13 MLCs.
In May of this year, Cubadebate reported on the premiere of the “Profundo” and described it as an innovative product added to the brand’s permanent portfolio and that it would be sold “in stores in Cuban pesos and in freely convertible currency, for a value of 227 CUP, while it will also be able to found in hotel and non-hotel gastronomy”. So far, at least in Villa Clara, the “novelty” has not been marketed in establishments in national currency.
A clerk at the “La Veguita” store, belonging to the Caracol chain, assured that in this last week a considerable number of people have come to the establishment looking for cheaper rums, supposedly to hoard them before December arrives.
This woman does not know why the original prices of drinks were maintained in this place, located a little further from the city center. “So far, the same prices have been maintained here that were modified months ago,” says the worker, explaining that “the Havana Club is the one who establishes how much their products cost and they may now have problems with the raw material,” the woman speculates.
On several occasions, spokespersons for Havana Club have referred that the demand for rums in national currency was much greater than the replenishment capacity, and that they tried to occupy the entire allocation of alcoholic beverages in the market, in the absence of other brands of rums and beers.
Early last year, the deputy regional sales manager for Havana Club International S.A., Yaniel Gómez Rivero, told the state press that “HCI will maintain stable offers both in Freely Convertible Currency (MLC) and in Cuban pesos (CUP)”. The first was fulfilled.
(Photo by the author)
(Photo by the author)
(Photo by the author)
(Photo by the author)
While HCI — the result of the union between the Cuba Ron SA corporation and the French group Pernod Ricard — confirms that it exports its rums to more than 120 countries; Cubans must pay between 1,500 and 2,000 pesos for a bottle in the informal market, much more than it was worth during the special period, when it was around 150 CUP, the same as a bath soap cost.
Another part of the population, without remittances or extraordinary salaries, settle for homemade “preparations” from master rum makers in the “art of the alembic” of dubious quality and whose secondary effects become significant. Apart from those baptized as “bone tiger” or “wait for me on the ground”, the streamers recently created a new “brand” whose name (somewhat vulgar) would be the equivalent of “I bother me”.
A little over a month before the end of the year, the offer of drinks in national currency is practically nil. Hence, “the little that enters the state’s restaurants and bars also comes out from behind,” says Julio, who was a bartender at one of these Santa Clara establishments, ironically.
“It works like this: they tell the customer that they only have rum for cocktails. These drinks are prepared with little drink so you save bottles and bottles. Here everyone fights as he can. A bottle that you sell is an egg carton for your children”.
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