14ymedio, Havana, 6 December 2023 — The directors of the Sancti Spíritus Food Industry Company complained on Wednesday that what they call “the war between Russia and Ukraine” has triggered the price of wheat imported by Cuba. Each ton of flour costs the country 13 million pesos, they explained, three times more than what it used to pay before the invasion decreed by Vladimir Putin. In the province, the solution to save raw material has been drastic: reduce the size of the bread rolls.
Before the war, COVID-19 had already made the price of bread more expensive, causing a season of shortages on the tables from which the citizens have not been able to recover. A ton of wheat, which the country buys and processes in its mills because it’s cheaper than importing flour, is enough to satisfy 12 days of national production. In the case of Sancti Spíritus, 28.4 tons of flour are needed daily to produce standard bread, but only 24 are being received.
What the leaders themselves call a “small ball” (a roll) of rationed bread has had to be made smaller. The approximately 3.5 ounces that each bread roll weighed has now become 2 ounces. The good news, if there is one, is that the price has also dropped: it costs 25 centavos less, explained the director of the Food Industry in the province, Víctor Díaz Acosta.
Díaz Acosta also regretted that, since he subsidizes almost 50% of the production cost of standard bread – about 1.40 pesos – his company registers a loss of between three and four million pesos each month, par
