Since March 13, Cuban banks have been accepting the MIR cardissued in Russia, which allows money withdrawals and converts rubles into Cuban pesos, facilitating transactions by tourists or businessmen from the Eurasian nation on the island.
This payment system challenges the criminal blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba for more than six decades, since it establishes links between financial organizations of the two countries, including third parties using these gateways.
The Russian agency Sputnik in recent days quoted the Ambassador in Havana Andrei Guskov making these arguments, adding that the implementation of this system should have a positive effect on increasing Russian tourist flows to the island.
Likewise, Professor Luis René Fernández Tabío, a researcher at the International Economic Research Center at the University of Havana, assessed that “it is a contribution to the balance of payments, and with it the country can import goods from the Eurasian nation and services”. , in addition to protecting the bilateral link from the negative effects of the blockade.
For Fernández Tabío, it is also a window that will help break through the direct and indirect effects of the economic war against Russia by Western sanctions, banning the import and export of goods, services and technology.
The Cuban expert explained that the MIR payment system represents a step away from the Swift system and could favor Cuba’s incorporation into a transaction method if it becomes generalized, whether within the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) or others alternative mechanisms created to escape the dominance of the dollar and its entire system of unilateral economic coercion that is illegal in every respect and violates human rights. (ALH)
Nuria Barbosa Leon/granny
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