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The Banco Popular de Ahorro (BPA) has begun to gradually settle the foreign currency accounts that have been blocked for years, with special priority given to Cuban doctors on missions, according to statements from a bank official in Sancti Spíritus.
Yeney Ceballo Hernández, head of the Personal Banking Department of BPA in that province, explained that starting in February 2025 a special treatment will be initiated for this segment: "Our collaborators are a sensitive and important segment, and they receive special attention. Why? Because they are doctors working abroad, and many of them are the ones ensuring the currency that is so desperately needed by the country today."
Of the more than 100 collaborators registered in the BPA of Sancti Spíritus, more than 77% of the pending cases have already been paid.
The remaining 23% has not received their funds because they are still abroad and return sporadically, not due to any lack of willingness on the part of the bank, as the official clarified.
The reason for this priority is economic: the Cuban government has over 24,000 health workers in 56 nations, whose missions represent the main source of foreign currency for the State, although the regime retains about 85% of the salary paid by host countries to each collaborating doctor.
For the remaining clients with blocked accounts, the BPA implemented a list of "unmet claims" organized by seniority: as foreign currency is received through deposits or other means, partial or total payments are made according to availability.
Ceballo Hernández indicated that in the case of transfers received from abroad, almost all of the pending issues have now been resolved: "There was a time when that list of transfers was enormous; we couldn't even access paying 50 pesos, but now they are being addressed, and almost all the pending transfers have been resolved."
Another way to ease the situation has been the floating rate, which allows customers to convert their foreign currency to Cuban pesos at the daily rate. "This floating rate has come to solve an old problem, where people had foreign currency but could do nothing with it," the official explained.
This process takes place within the context of a profound currency crisis that Cuba has been experiencing since 2019, which intensified between 2023 and 2025. The dollar reached an exchange rate of 395 Cuban pesos in the informal market in August 2025, and in May 2026, the official rate in Segment III places the dollar at 498 Cuban pesos.
The Central Bank accelerated the implementation of the floating rate since late 2024 as part of a strategy to attract external capital, and in March 2026 the regime announced that it would allow Cubans residing abroad to open accounts in foreign currencies in banks on the island.
The accumulated debt with medical collaborators reflects a structural paradox of the system: the Cuban state relies on the foreign currency generated by these professionals, but for years it prevented them from accessing the money they themselves deposited in accounts that were frozen due to the dictatorship's financial crisis.
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