14ymedio, Havana, November 24, 2023 — The balance sheet for bancarización* (banking reform) four months after its implementation, is not optimistic: The micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) are increasingly suspicious of electronic payment methods and continue to “retain cash.” The shortage of banknotes is still at its peak, and the Island’s banks are suffering a growing stampede of their staff. These are some of the conclusions that emerge from the appearance this Thursday on State TV’s Roundtable program of the minds behind this process.
“Every day more cashiers leave,” said the Minister-President of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC), Joaquín Alonso Vázquez. Without attributing it to emigration – outside the Island or to other jobs – the leader explained that the lack of workers was a hard blow to bank reform, because it affects the key point for the circulation and control of the money.
It was useless, Alonso said, to raise the salaries of employees, who were also paid “for good results.”
Escorted by the general director of Payment Systems of the BCC, Julio Pérez Álvarez, and by the vice president, Alberto Quiñones, Alonso focused his talk on celebrating that Cuba has “advanced towards bancarización,” despite the fact that it did not have “strong investments in technological equipment” nor enough “point-of-sale terminals.” Condemned to work with old equipment – “because we are hindered from accessing new technologies,” he said, alluding to the U.S. embargo – the BCC had a single resource available: “innovation.”
The official assured that “all actors in the economy now have full access to banking services – an element that differentiates us from other nations,” he said proudly, but the MSMEs continue to have multiple reservations and prefer to manage their operations in cash.
Cuba has no choice but bancarización, Alonso said, because making paper money is an expensive process, and Cuba does not have the resources for this. “Using banknotes means importing the paper, the inks and maintaining the equipment. After they are issued you have to transport them, distribute them, count them, and after 10