A Cuban recorded the price board of a commercial establishment in Havana this Friday, describing it as one of the cheapest she found, which triggered an avalanche of reactions on social media confirming that the food crisis on the island shows no signs of easing.
Yoryany Veranes shared the image on his Facebook profile with a direct warning: "these are the places where I found the cheapest prices… you don’t want to see the more expensive ones!".
The chalkboard, written in chalk on wood in what appears to be a warehouse or grocery store, lists prices in Cuban pesos (CUP) that are unattainable for most Cubans: rice at 330 CUP, salt at 250, flour at 440, powdered milk at 1,700, sugar at 550, a pack of chicken at 6,800, bacon at 6,500, chicken breast at 10,500, one liter of oil at 3,650, and eggs at 150 CUP each.
Comments from citizens in various provinces quickly confirmed that these prices are not an exception, but rather the baseline. Reports came from Cotorro where oil was priced at 4,500 CUP and chicken at 8,000; from Baracoa, oil was 5,000 and rice at 380; from Rodas in Cienfuegos, oil was at 7,000; and from Alta Habana, sugar was 1,400 per package and oil also at 7,000 CUP.
A retiree with forty years of work summarized the situation with a staggering figure: she earns 3,150 pesos a month, and two pounds of sugar cost her 1,100. Another user was even more blunt: "Just the oil is a month's salary."
From Camagüey, someone wrote that the prices on the board "are cheap in comparison" to those in their city. From Bayamo, the warning was more graphic: "Hold on to the brush because I'm taking the ladder." And there was someone who, with bitter irony, asked for the address of the establishment because everything in their neighborhood was more expensive.
A private worker who participated in the debate summed it up bluntly: "There is only one reality, understand that we live in a dictatorship. I don't see anything as expensive; it's just the fair price for continuing to endure communism."
The macroeconomic backdrop explains the outrage. The official year-on-year inflation in Cuba reached 20.70% in July 2026, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information, with food and non-alcoholic beverages accounting for 63.18% of the total increase in the consumer price index that month.
The minimum wage effective since July is 3,210 CUP per month, equivalent to less than five dollars at the informal exchange rate, while meeting the basic needs of a family requires around 96,000 CUP per month, of which more than 70,000 goes solely for food, according to estimates from independent economists.
In that context, a pineapple cake at a pastry shop in Centro Habana costs 9,650 CUP, which is more than the average monthly salary of a Cuban worker.
Moreover, the prices of bread in Santiago de Cuba have sparked a debate about whether eating has become a privilege for the few.
Meanwhile, the government launched a crackdown on the private sector in Las Tunas, resulting in 22 establishments being shut down and fines totaling over 1.2 million pesos in just one week, along with the closure of the few available food sources without providing any alternatives.
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