Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz once once more referred to the high prices of stores in Freely Convertible Currency (MLC).
The leader considered that it is unfair to compare what happens in government stores with the limit established for SMEs.
He justified that the State buys in more expensive markets with fewer benefits. “Our foreign currency collection stores do not buy those resources, chicken, oil, in the same markets where non-state management forms buy them,” he said.
He also stated that the TRDs “do not work with the illegal currency market, they work at 1×120, therefore, the analysis is different.”
Marrero Cruz also pointed out that in the case of state-owned businesses, they have to go and buy in “more distant markets at higher prices.” “We have had difficulties in paying suppliers, paying very expensive freight, so it is not fair to do that analysis,” added.
Will TRD readjust prices?
Following these statements, will the price adjustment promised a few hours earlier by the Cuban Prime Minister himself come regarding?
Let us remember that Marrero Cruz acknowledged that MLC stores have more expensive products than MSMEs. And advertisement that “the TRD will take action on the matter.”
Along the same lines, the Minister of Finance and Prices, Vladimir Regueiro Ale, defended the prices in stores that operate in freely convertible currency, because “the conditions under which private and state-owned companies operate are not the same.”
He assured that there are exchanges with chain stores to achieve lower commercial margins with the aim of lowering prices.
240% tax on Cuban government stores
A 2020 ICEX Spain, Export and Investment report indicates that state-owned companies in Cuba that sell consumer products and food in their stores apply trade margins of up to 240% to imported products.
Another BCC article from 2012, signed by Fernando Ravsberg, a journalist based on the island, noted regarding this tax: “Since Cubans were authorized to use the dollar, a 240% tax was established on all products sold in hard currency. It was then said that the objective was to redistribute, using the money from this tax, to subsidize the most humble.”
More than a decade later, Cuban state-run dollar stores sell a carton of eggs, for example, for almost 20 dollars (more than 6,000 CUP at the informal exchange rate, the only one available to the population). Meanwhile, in some MSMEs they can be found for over 2,000 pesos.
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