HAVANA, Cuba, Aug 2 (ACN) As part of the implementation of the commercialization policy in Cuba, it was decided to decentralize the prices of sweet potato, plantain and malanga for social consumption, which benefits producers and brings new challenges in the management of the state budget.
Meisi Bolaños, Cuban Minister of Finance and Prices, explained today at a press conference that the measures published in Resolution 320 in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Cuba number 88, of July 30, 2021, are intended to be more conscious about the real cost of production.
With these directives, producers will be stimulated and better-quality products will be obtained, but emphasis should be placed on the prices agreed upon by the committees created at the provincial and municipal levels, he stressed.
The budget managers of the internal trade system should adopt efficiency measures and better control over the resources they have, she pointed out, because it is not foreseeing an oversizing in the budget, but a call for management efficiency.
Quantities will not be affected; there must be a better management of reserves through an efficient contracting process, which will allow to achieve good prices, quality, and seek rationality in the chain, added the minister.
Bolaños clarified that the retail price of medical diets for agricultural products and those destined for the Family Care Systems will remain centralized; likewise, the prices of workers’ canteens will be ratified at an average of 18 pesos per worker.
If it is necessary at a certain moment to respond to any subsidy or financing, it will be done defending rationality and macroeconomic indicators, he added.
Another aspect to highlight in the resolution is that the limit established with the ordinance task of not being able to exceed the price twice what the products cost in the same period of 2019 is eliminated.
These powers, granted to the local government contracting committees, have been adapted because the reality of the country is changing and situations have converged on the production that make it impossible to limit the growth of prices to only two times above 2019, she said.
The minister indicated that production costs have increased, however the cap is eliminated without prejudice to the power that the authorities of the territory continue to maintain to establish retail prices, while maintaining control over abusive prices.
During the press conference held at the Ministry of Agriculture, it was clarified that the measures are the result of a study on dual prices.
Before the regulation there were centralized prices for more than 40 agricultural products that put at the same level the offers for the different destinations, with the regulation task they are fixed in three products for social consumption: malanga, plantain and sweet potato, which are eliminated with the recently published resolution.
