An image posted this Sunday in the Facebook group Ciudad de Matanzas en Fotos shows bars of guava candy marked with a price of 600 Cuban pesos (CUP) each, which has sparked a wave of outrage among Cubans who see this price as the starkest reflection of the rampant inflation plaguing the country.
The product, regarded for decades as one of the most traditional and accessible sweets in the Cuban diet, has turned into a luxury item for many consumers due to the sustained rise in prices.
"If the national production is like this, what do we leave for imports..." wrote the user Mercedes Mercy Maa while sharing the image in the mentioned group.
He didn't specify when or in what specific location the snapshot was taken.
"What a lack of respect for the people, a bar of guava candy for 600, how horrible," wrote a user in the comments of the post.
Another internet user linked the price to the rising cost of sugar. "If something so inexpensive in previous years is now a luxury, and a kilogram of sugar costs 1,350 pesos, just imagine the amount that is used," they noted.
"That's what happens when you destroy the countryside," summarized a third voice in the comments.
Since July, the monthly minimum wage is set at 3,210 CUP, which means a single candy bar accounts for nearly 20% of a budget sector worker's income.
Economists estimate that a person needs around 96,060 CUP per month to meet their basic needs, which is about 30 times the current minimum wage.
The price of sugar also highlights the crisis in the Cuban sugar industry. The 2024-2025 harvest produced less than 150,000 tons, the lowest level in over a century, while the country's needs for domestic consumption are estimated to be between 600,000 and 700,000 tons annually.
The difference between production and demand forces the import of sugar at international prices, which raises the cost of derivative products, according to the available information.
The price control situation worsened after Resolution 150/2026 from the Ministry of Finance and Prices, published on June 20, which removed retail price caps on products such as oil, chicken, powdered milk, pasta, and sausages.
The price of oil rose from around 1,500 pesos in April to over 4,000 pesos in August, with prices reaching up to 7,000 pesos per liter in some areas.
In response to the escalation, Matanzas set reference prices for some basic food items this Saturday, with oil priced at 2,500 CUP per liter and sugar at 400 CUP per pound. Similar measures were later adopted in Villa Clara, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, and Guantánamo.
The economist Pedro Monreal described the change as a failure of the package of 176 economic measures approved in June. "176 measures and only one achievement: to show that they learned nothing," he stated.
The official year-on-year inflation reached 18.27% in June, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information, while independent estimates place the real increase in prices at nearly 70% annually when including the informal market.
In that context, the provincial caps are trying to contain inflation that continues to erode purchasing power.
A bar of guava candy priced at 600 CUP has thus become another example of the gap between the prices faced by Cubans and the incomes they have to meet their needs.
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