According to the Prime Minister, private individuals evaded 50 billion* pesos, and 354 sales of ’hidden’ products had to be forced
14ymedio, Madrid, July 18, 2024 — We could not expect anything other than a long list of economic penalties from Prime Minister Manuel Marrero’s intervention this Wednesday in Parliament, in which he evaluated the activity. He did not disappoint. Most perplexing was the revelation that private individuals allegedly evaded 50 billion pesos*, “a third of the fiscal deficit,” he emphasized.
It is not known if the prime minister made a mistake, since the deficit, confirmed that same day, did not reach 100 billion, but that detail is almost a minor matter. “It is not clear how the emerging non-state sector would have been able to defraud the omnipresent Cuban Government for an amount of 50 billion* pesos,” the economist Pedro Monreal, astonished, wrote on X. “If that were the case, we would be facing colossal government incompetence.”
Error or not, it was not the only demonstration of that “incompetence.” In the delivery of land in usufruct, 388,000 tenant farmers have been “purged, 130,000 illegalities being detected,” and in livestock, 107,000 owners have been visited with 98,000 violations found, key data within the sectors that, fundamentally, feed Cubans. The numbers demonstrate the absolute carelessness with which production has been supervised in a country where the State constantly monitors its citizens.
The numbers show the absolute neglect with which production has been supervised in a country where the State constantly monitors its citizens
The urgency to sanction those who sold food with capped prices without complying with the rule is shocking. And beyond: in the face of what the popular imagination calls “the kidnapping of the chicken” – in reference to the MSMEs that chose not to sell it in the midst of the uncertainty about the price – the inspectors have forced its release for sale.
“We’re going where the products are,” said Marrero, who cited the number of forced sales of hidden products at 354 at the established prices. As a result of the breaches of this resolution, which has only been in force for 10 days, 53 licenses were withdrawn and 21 confiscations made.
The Minister of Finance, Vladimir Regueiro, had already anticipated that in less than 72 hours, 400 violators of the price cap would be ‘hunted,’ so it is not surprising that on the 11th, 12th and 13th, 891 inspections were made that found 4,000 violations, whose fines amount to more than 13 million pesos. The authorities said they had 7,000 inspectors, but it is not known how, given the shortage of workers; Marrero said that it could be 20,000. “The objective is not to close businesses, but to persuade sellers to follow the established prices,” he concluded.
Some positive data for public accounts did appear, such as the amount of money raised in tariffs on final products, where the figure went from 108 million pesos to 610 million
Some positive data for public accounts did appear, such as the
