Three journalists from the newspaper Invasor, the official outlet of the province of Ciego de Ávila, openly acknowledged in their podcast "Punto y aparte" that the price caps in Cuba have always been "dead letters": regulations published on paper that never translated into real markets.
The episode, recorded in late July, brought together journalists Roberto Carlos Delgado and Filiberto Pérez Carvajal along with the host of the program to freely discuss the price crisis shaking the island following the removal of national price caps on products such as chicken, oil, powdered milk, pasta, and sausages.
The most striking confession of the debate came from Pérez Carvajal when he recalled that Invasor published "countless times entire pages with price caps" for agricultural products—yucca, sweet potato, pumpkin, malanga—that never appeared at the stands: "Our own readers have later demanded answers from us and even labeled us as liars. Because what we published has not been reflected at the stands. Dead letters."
Journalists pointed out that the Resolution 148 of the Ministry of Finance and Prices, which mandates the preparation of cost sheets to set prices, is largely unknown and not complied with.
"There is a widespread ignorance about what is established by law 148. When you walk through the markets, you notice that the price today is one amount, tomorrow it will be another, and the day after that it will change again, and there is no explanation for it," Delgado stated.
The communicators from the newspaper Invasor also questioned the new rules for "market correlation" pricing that will replace the mandatory cost sheet: "It is very qualitative, very subjective, and in some way, it will be much more difficult to control," they warned.
The program concluded with a warning that summarizes the situation of millions of Cubans: "There will be painful transformations; these are fundamental changes that alter the structure of property, sometimes to limits that we had not been able to imagine, at least for the majority."
The conclusion of the debate was equally stark regarding the state's ability to manage change: "The truth, to put it plainly, is that the control mechanisms are still not defined. At least the guidelines that will explain how this entire complex process of change and transformations will be monitored are not clear, and it will be complicated."
The debate took place weeks after the regime lifted the national limits through Resolution 150/2026, part of the package of 176 economic measures announced by Díaz-Canel in June.
The journalists of Invasor themselves warned that this repeal does not explain the price increase: "If those prices were high before the resolution was repealed, the problem is much more serious than whether the resolution is repealed or not."
After the elimination of price ceilings, oil was quoted between 4,000 and 7,000 pesos per liter in informal markets, while the previous ceiling was 990 pesos.
Several provinces responded by setting their own local limits, and in Villa Clara, the inspectors found eggs priced at 4,200 pesos each when the provincial cap is 110 pesos.
This chaos occurs in a context of official year-on-year inflation of 20.70% in July 2026, with food prices rising by 26.36% annually. Economist Steve Hanke estimates the actual year-on-year inflation in Cuba to be at 67%.
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