Economist Elías Amor dismantled this Thursday the official justification from the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) for transferring pension payments to the Mipymes, asserting that the claim of protecting the elderly is a lie and that the real issue is the operational collapse caused by the queues at bank branches.
In a conversation with Tania Costa, Amor was categorical in referring to the statements made by the president of the BCC, Juana Lilia Delgado Portal. “That is a lie. If the elderly are wandering around Havana looking like zombies, searching for something to eat, rummaging through the trash, then it's clear that the situation for the elderly in Cuba is possibly the most vulnerable in all of Latin America.”
According to the economist, what truly concerns the leadership of the BCC is not the well-being of retirees, but that the lines of pensioners disrupt banking activity on payment days.
"The problem is that when people are in line to collect their pension, the banks can no longer carry out any more transactions. The pension line blocks the bank's activity."
The result is that any other financial transactions are frozen. “A person who goes to the bank to make a payment in foreign currency, to withdraw from their account, or to carry out any financial operation simply cannot do so because the bank is overwhelmed on those days by the massive presence of retirees.”
Amor identified the structural root of the problem. "This queue arises because banks are inefficient, because they don't know how to operate, because they don't have good software applications to serve their customers, and because people don't trust banks and go to withdraw cash, which they can't get from ATMs, so they request it at the counter."
To illustrate the seriousness of the situation, Tania Costa recounted a specific case: "Someone just told me that their mother-in-law was supposed to receive her pension between the 1st and the 4th of this month, and here we are on the 23rd (Thursday) and she still hasn't been able to collect her pension."
The diagnosis of Love is that involving Mipymes in those payments does not solve the problem: "That is what concerns the president of the Central Bank of Cuba, but the problem lies in the queue."
The measure, announced by the BCC on July 17 and supported by Resolution 74/2026 effective from July 20, is part of a package of 176 economic actions presented by the Cuban government in June 2026. The scheme had already been piloted since April in four municipalities of Havana and since May in Holguín, where about 20 Mipymes started paying pensions to nearly 5,000 retirees.
The social background complicates the analysis. Cuba has 27.6% of its population over 65 years old, with more than 1.7 million retirees depending on the system, and the maximum pension is 4,000 pesos per month—less than 10 dollars at the unofficial exchange rate—while the basic basket exceeds 30,000 pesos. According to data from Cuba Sindical, 99% of surveyed retirees stated that their pension is insufficient to cover basic needs.
Amor was emphatic in his conclusion: "Not because they intend to help elderly people or because they want to assist them or improve their conditions. It is simply to avoid those lines at the banks that disrupt banking activity, which is ultimately what concerns the president of the Central Bank the most."
The economist called for the immediate elimination of the scheme, describing it as "yet another one of the many ideas from the Castro regime that end up failing, for which they then blame the blockade and the embargo for everything that goes wrong."
One of the viewers added to Elías Amor's analysis that, in her opinion, the regime fears that a social explosion could occur in the lines in front of the banks.
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