Díaz-Canel: “Prices are going to be high but we cannot allow them to be abusive and speculative”

The Cuban ruler Miguel Diaz-Canel He assured that, with his package of economic measures to “correct distortions and re-boost the economy,” prices will continue to be high, but they will not allow “abusive or speculative prices”.

In a meeting of the Ministry of Finance and Prices (MFP) held this Saturday, the also first secretary of the central committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) warned about the need to carry out more effective price verifications, with the aim of confronting abuse and speculation.

"Prices are going to be high, because today we have structural problems of supply and demand, but what we cannot allow is that there are abusive and speculative practices like they are putting them, whether in state or non-state entities," said the ruler.

With inflation out of control and without a viable plan to balance the country's economy, Díaz-Canel harangued MPF officials to look for price control formulas. “We would really need it if there were no abusive and speculative actions, because that gives confidence to the population,” he said.

For his part, the prime minister Manuel Marrero Cruz, “made reference to the state of opinion of the population regarding the uncontrolled increase in prices and called for finding effective solutions to stop the inflationary spiral,” according to a report by the National Television News (NTV).

We must re-analyze all the distortions associated and that are palpable (every day the people are raising them), associated with prices, and that from this ministry, which is the rector, concrete proposals be made that respond to those distortions,” indicated the prime minister.

For his part, the head of the MPF, Vladimir Reguero Ale, committed to working this year “on strengthening price control at the local level through effective consultation, as well as on the conclusion of a centralized proposal for maximum prices based on a nomenclature of origin imported by forms of non-state management, fundamentally first need products".

That is, the Cuban regime intends in the course of 2024 to comply with what it has already warned on previous occasions: bump prices to essential products imported by the MSMEs and other “non-state” actors.

The thin and sinuous line that separates a high price from an “abusive and speculative” one will lead MPF officials to cap prices, a policy tried on multiple occasions and always failed.

“The official press releases about the ministerial balance meetings are getting worse and worse. They have just 'tiptoed' around the balance sheet of the Ministry of Finance, a key entity for macroeconomic stabilization on which it will be difficult to make progress in 2024," complained Cuban economist Pedro Monreal when he saw what was published by the official website. Cubadebate.

At the end of December 2023, Regueiro Ale announced at the Round Table a regulation of maximum prices for certain basic products, regardless of who markets them.

Among these products, the minister assured that The price of chicken sold by micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) would be regulated. Regueiro pointed out that chicken is an imported product and that the State must make "so many efforts" to guarantee its basic consumption through the regulated family basket.

But "then we see marketing parallel to figures, at prices that really border on speculative and abusive, when we review the real costs and in the markets where they are being acquired," he added.

In that sense, the leader stressed that "it is not about regulating everything", since that would make a system impossible to manage and would limit the dynamics of price coordination, but he stressed that "there is consumption that must be protected for the population." .