Havana Cuba. – “They make the misery of Cuban wages official” someone commented in a publication on Facebook, thus pointing out the main consequence of the regime having decided start buying forex at an exchange rate higher than that of the informal market.
One of the first reactions of those who heard the “good news” was total disappointment, while those who do not receive remittances from abroad harbored some hope that, with the participation of the Central Bank, the prices of currencies would begin to fall, benefiting from somehow in the midst of a dollarized economy and where state salaries, paid in a currency that is increasingly devalued, are possibly among the lowest in the world.
In this sense, having established the exchange rate at 120 pesos per dollar, many ran to calculate how much their salaries and pensions were “officially” reduced, thus discovering that these have returned to the same values they had before the implementation of the so-called “Sort Task”a package of economic measures that, consciously, has caused more ruin than benefits to Cuban families.
“Why have wages increased if now with this they have returned to the same as they paid me three years ago?” asks a friend, a university professor, seeing that her salary would barely be enough to acquire about 35 dollars, perhaps much less. meanwhile, the regime has made it clear that it will not sell foreign currency for the time being, which will raise the exchange in the informal market to much higher values than it is now.
“If they say that they will not sell dollars, then on the street it will be 200 pesos. Now they’ve finished screwing us all. In a week you will see the prices of things. Impossible to face this that comes with a salary”, lamented this friend who has no doubts that the situation, already unbearable, will get worse and that, evidently, the “brains” of the regime do not know how solve the disaster created by themselves.
“Every time they think of a solution it is to get worse. I think there is no one left to be disappointed. Sometimes I think they do it on purpose, they are crazy because this has just sunk, “says this friend.
“I think these guys really want people to take to the streets. this is another July 11, you will see. A [Alejandro] Gil should give him a medal when this falls apart because everything he does is to piss people off even more”, commented one of my neighbors while we listened together to the television interventions of the Minister of Economy and the president of the Central Bank.
Days before the Round Table was announced this Wednesday, people on the street speculated about what would happen and there were those who predicted not only an exchange rate lower than that of the informal market, above 80 pesos per dollar, but, in addition, a free sale of the foreign currency that would definitively sink the illegal exchange.
Well, none of that happened, on the contrary, everything indicates that the official rate could increase as sellers and buyers on the street adjust the offer to the extremely high demand, especially from the thousands of Cuban men and women who think of emigrating. .
On the eve of the announcement, in the various online forex trading groups there was no lack of predictions and even attacks by so-called “cyberclairs” who must now be among the most disappointed, while the new measures hardly favor the same resellers against those who undertook it, even blaming them for the rise in prices, in a manipulation of reality whose goal is probably the same as always, to free the regime from blame.
But with this announcement of an “exchange market” the Cuban regime would apparently only be trying to collect foreign currency, as much as it can capture in the shortest possible time, and not precisely move towards a stable and realistic system of exchange and reexchange, much less participate as a regulatory entity for the benefit of the citizen who does not have access to strong currencies and whose survival depends on the precarious state salary.
“What has happened is very simple. They are not establishing a foreign exchange market as they announced,” says the young economist Alexis Coronado. “They only intend to absorb all the currency that would otherwise be leaving Cuba and that’s it. (…) The other thing that should follow will never come, at most they will once again sell a few dollars at the airport, to travelers, as they did before, but until then (…). It is a measure that contradicts everything that Díaz-Canel had said about stimulating exports, while maintaining the exchange rate of 1 x 24 for companies, so let’s not expect too much of what will happen. With that double rate there will be no production, there will be no exports, there will be no dollars for anyone. They have taken thousands of turns to fall into the same thing. Not only did they reduce salaries again with this new official rate, but now there is more than one exchange rate. A real madness. I did not expect anything else”, concludes the young man.
Meanwhile, just a few hours after the announcement, the exchange rate in the informal market has begun to climb above 115 pesos and probably in less than a week, according to the comments of sellers and buyers on social networks, it will have risen above the 125 pesos, and thus, together with the dollar, the prices of all products will rise, perpetuating the life of the ordinary citizen in an infinite nightmare.
OPINION ARTICLE
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