Pork soars above 1,000 pesos per pound in Cuba

In the midst of a volatile economic scenario, where The Cuban government sells fuel in the country at exorbitant prices. and the exchange rate in the informal market is increasingly unstable; A common product on the Cuban table, such as pork, reaches 1,000 pesos in sales around this time.

An independent media publication ElToque, in which they claim to have obtained the numbers “from the observation and capture of digital data from different sources,” confirms that, in Havana, the cost of the pound of pork steak ranges between 857 and 1,200 Cuban pesos.

Likewise, other pieces of pork do not fall below these high prices. For example, smoked loin with bone has a value of 750 to 1,100 Cuban pesos. While, bone-in loin ranges from 842 to 950 Cuban pesos.

For its part, boneless loin has a different value depending on the way it is purchased. He smoked boneless can vary from 1,000 to 1,315 Cuban pesos. While, The boneless one costs between 340 and 1,757 Cuban pesos..

The leg also differs in its two versions. The smoked is between 847 and 1,100 pesos, while the single leg ranges between 620 and 1,060 Cuban pesos.

As to the boneless dough, its minimum value is 857 pesos, while the maximum is 1,350 pesos.

Finally, the sirloin can be found at 833 pesos or up to 1,150 Cuban pesos, and the marinated one at 1,150.

Although exclusive to Havana, according to the aforementioned source, these prices can be replicated in other provinces of the country and even present significant variations.

The high price of this product has been such that on April 26 of last year, A resident in Havana reported that a pork leg was snatched from a man who was walking down the street..

Even with its quote of 580 pesos that was reported for the end of the year, thousands of Cuban families had to give up the traditional New Year's Eve dinner in which the pig is the "king."

For that occasion, the regime stated that it would not lower prices.

"A feed is in the order of 110 thousand pesos, no matter how much we want it, because today in the country we want pork to go down, but with these raw material prices it is very difficult for pork to go down," warned Idalexis Peña Echevarría, head of the Porcine company in Las Tunas.

However, this is an evil that has been dragging on since 2022, when The population faced endless lines to be able to bring even a piece of the coveted delicacy to their tables. The government in several provinces rationed the amounts that families could buy.

Although the regime Miguel Diaz-Canel dedicated several weeks between March and April 2022 to thoroughly analyze the production problems of the pork sector and search for solutions, which included 12 measures to “end the shortage of this meat in the country”, these never produced the results that were expected and needed.

That same year, the authorities planned to produce only 26,000 tons of pork, a ridiculous figure compared to five years before: in 2017 almost 200,000 tons of the food were produced.