A group of Cubans play dominoes during a power outage in Havana. Ramon Espinosa (AP)
The crisis that has plagued Cubans for years is about to take a new turn. The admission of the seriousness of the situation came this week from the same authorities. The Ministers of Economy, Energy and Mines appeared on the official television program Mesa Redonda, the platform on which all the disasters of the last twenty years are announced. In a martial tone, both heads of state and government announced that the country did not have enough money to buy food abroad and that the situation, including energy supplies, could worsen in the coming weeks. They basically confirmed that there will be less of everything the islanders already had: less milk, less coffee, less pork, less public transportation and fewer hours of electricity.
“The economy is in a complex situation,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Alejandro Gil Fernández, who did not provide any figures during the broadcast broadcast on Wednesday but acknowledged the delays in the delivery of monthly rationed food to every Cuban household due to a lack of milk the children and lack of bread.
For his part, Vicente de la O Levy, Minister of Energy and Mines, announced that there would be power outages in October due to a deficit of up to 700 megawatts, equivalent to 20% of national consumption, and a worsening transport fuel shortage. . The minister explained that of the 120,000 to 130,000 tons of diesel per month that the country requires, 1,000 tons would be used for electricity production. “We have suppliers and countries that were unable to comply with the requirements and violated contracts. “We had to go out to buy most of the fuel for the day,” he said. “We are in a difficult situation, but we will get better.”
After acknowledging the deep stagnation in which the Cuban economy is, blaming the economic embargo of the United States and the increase in food prices on the international market, the ministers admitted that the country must focus on national production : “Depend more and more than we can produce,” declared Gil Fernández, who also called on the Cuban people to maintain confidence in the revolution. “We know that life is hard,” he emphasized. “But trust that the only way out is revolution and socialism.”
Many Cubans saw nothing new in the ministers’ recent statements and made this clear on social networks. “It’s more of the same,” Dani González assures EL PAÍS from Havana. “What I know is that no leader goes through what we, the people, go through. “I’m disappointed in everything they promised us and didn’t deliver.”
Before the television broadcast on Wednesday, emergency measures taken in some provinces of the country had become known, including the impact of electricity hours in Cuban households, the adjustment of working hours, the reorganization of remote work, the reduction in the use of lighting or restructuring school schedules.
“I don’t think this is an exceptional situation,” Cuban economist Mauricio de Miranda told EL PAÍS. “We have been in an almost zero option situation for a long time. The Cuban economy is in a structural crisis that has lasted for more than three decades, the Cuban economy has not emerged from the crisis.”
The government has tried unsuccessfully in recent years to save the starving Cuban economy with a series of measures, among which stands out the so-called task order, which envisaged currency unification; the opening of foreign currency businesses, the opening of some mixed capital companies to foreign investors; the creation of small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) or the processing of financial transactions, to name just a few. However, the population has suffered from a shortage that some compare only to the so-called special period, after the end of aid from the USSR. In the last two years of crisis, more than 300,000 Cubans have left the country, the largest exodus in the history of Castroism.
The shortage situation in which the country was already intensified with the health crisis due to Covid-19 and the drastic decline in the most important sector of the economy: tourism. At the end of July, President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that Cuba would not receive the hoped-for 3.5 million international tourists this year. However, the country remains committed to allocating its few resources to this sector, which experts believe is a mistake.
“It was a serious mistake to allocate the majority of resources to tourism, because due to the scarcity of financial resources of the Cuban economy and the very limited investment capacity, important sectors such as agriculture and the industrial sector were neglected,” he tells De Miranda.
Cubans are facing a very critical situation, which has been reflected in growing social discontent in recent years. Foods that were once on the table, such as pork, are now in short supply. Complaints about the lack of fuel are increasing, even for hearses. High product prices are incompatible with low wages. The Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OACDH) showed last September in its VI. Report on the state of social rights in Cuba finds that extreme poverty in the country has increased dramatically in a year. According to them, 88% of Cubans live on less than $1.9 a day and 48% have stopped eating because they don’t have enough money to buy food.
“There is a need for a national debate about the future of the country,” says De Miranda. According to the economist, the short-term solution could be to enable private sector production to be promoted.
“We must make it possible for anyone with the necessary resources to start a business. And so production grows,” he continues. “But the fundamental problem is that the government does not want to abandon the model in which it is the government that takes care of the entire economy, that authorizes, that allows, that makes decisions.” That is absurd, and it is proven that a centralized model has failed in this way.”
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