State foreign exchange shops sell the same items at more expensive prices
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, Havana, 3 July 2024 — A day after the new measures announced by the Government on June 27, which establish a maximum profit margin of 30% on private sales to the State, it is not yet known with certainty whether or not the prices are capped for six products in private retail stores. There is only one thing certain: these basic necessities included on the list of capped prices by some municipal governments this weekend disappeared from the shelves on Tuesday.
On Saturday, the authorities of Plaza de la Revolución (Havana), Jobabo (Las Tunas) and Pinar del Río published lists of products with maximum prices for cooking oil (900 pesos per liter), chopped chicken (680 per kilogram), powdered milk (1,675 per kilo), sausages (1,045 per kilogram), pasta (835 pesos per kilo) and powdered detergent (630 pesos per kilo). But yesterday, Monday, when the regulation was supposed to come into force, in municipalities like Boyeros they said that they didn’t know anything, and among the businessmen it was all rumors and confusion.
“Does anyone know anything about the official prices? We’re confused.” The comment of Yulieta Hernández Díaz, president of Grupo de Construcciones Pilares, summed up the state of the matter well.
This Tuesday, the bewilderment of Cubans is even greater. The agro market operated by the Youth Labor Army (EJT) of the Armed Forces, at 17 and K in El Vedado, Havana, usually very well stocked, had almost all its shelves empty. The few products for sale were piled up together on the top shelves on the K Street side.
The sellers, however, responded to the surprised customers with a simple shrug of the shoulders. “They say they don’t know, but it’s clear that they must know something,” said an old woman. It was the same in the Arango market in Luyanó. “There’s nothing on the shelves; it’s dead, empty, a very strange thing,” a neighbor told this newspaper.
In the butcher shop at 17 and K, which operates as a private business, there was only chicken breast and picadillo [chopped meat]. The clerk said that he didn’t know why there were no chicken quarters or thighs, but customers could hear him talking on the phone with someone who told him that he that he had to change the blackboard: “Now I have to put the prices in kilograms.” He didn’t mention the amounts.
In the private business (MSME) Zona K’liente they weren’t selling the bird either. “There is no chicken or milk anywhere.” “There is n