The intention of the independent media, says Banco Metropolitano, is to reach 11 July 2024 with the US currency at 480-500 pesos
14ymedio, Madrid, 3 May 2024 — On Thursday, 2 May, Cuba’s Metropolitan Bank (BM) launched a WhatsApp channel with which it plans to counteract the “induced inflation” that, according to the entity, is exerted by the financial company El Toque. Although the Bank’s declared objective is to “keep the population informed,” its published exchange rate in force this Friday, stands at 123 pesos for 1 dollar or 134 in the case of 1 euro. The amount is light years away from the rate reported in the independent media, which is 390 pesos per euro and 385 pesos per dollar.
The dissertation continues accusing El Toque of seeking a social outbreak through the “artificial” increase of the dollar. The intention, the BM assures, is to reach 11 July 2024 – an unlikely date, three years after the ’11J’ nationwide protests on that date in 2021 – with the US currency at 480-500 pesos. “There is no economic or political justification for the price to rise in 24 hours, from one day to the next,” alleges the bank, which insists that the independent media is “secretly” financed by the United States and seeks to establish a false value of the Cuban peso, while promoting dollarization and reducing public spending.
“Despite Cuba’s economic problems, the rising values of the dollar respond to political intentions”
“The disproportionate exchange rate difference between the official and informal markets is generated not by the low prices of the former, but by the high levels assigned to the dollar by El Toque,” continues the long message, according to which, the exchange rate is replicated on social networks using big data. “Despite Cuba’s economic problems, the rising values of the dollar respond to political intentions. It is not the state control or deficiency, which exists, that generates the high value of the rate that El Toque presents, but rather its hand and visible intentionality from computer tools of dubious origin,” it insists.
In the most virulent attack in memory from the regime against the independent media, the BM wonders why the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) does not sanction El Toque, “managed by Cubans abroad.” The answer to this rhetorical doubt is that it is “a weapon of war of the US Intelligence community, previously used against Nicaragua, Argentina and Venezuela.” For this reason, the entity urges people to obtain information through its “channels.”
Faced with the onslaught, El Toque has not stood by and has responded, one by one, to each “reflection” of the BM. “As we are embarrassed by the level of ignorance shown by those who are supposed to understand something (even a little) about economics, we want
