A resident of Holguín reported that he was refused service at a private business on 13th Street in the city when he tried to pay with 20 Cuban peso bills.
Luis Mario González reported on Facebook that he stood in a long line to pay 18,000 pesos and that the establishment refused to accept 300 pesos in 20 CUP bills, a legal tender denomination that merchants are increasingly rejecting across the Island.
"I am going to pay 18 thousand pesos, I have 300 twenty peso bills and they refused to take them. I mean, you're paying 18 thousand..." González states in the video, visibly outraged.
The resident of Holguín demands a specific measure: that private businesses refusing to accept low-denomination bills should put up a sign at the entrance so that customers do not waste their time standing in line.
"It's helplessness. You wait in line, and for 300 pesos in 20-peso bills, they won't sell to you. You give everything: 1,000, 500... there's no blockade there," he said, frustrated by the rampant inflation that punishes those who have the least.
What hurts him the most, in his own words, is that the situation has no external excuse: "That's not a problem of the blockade. We are devouring each other as Cubans."
The case of González is not an isolated one. Last July, private businesses in Santiago de Cuba stopped accepting bills of 1, 5, 10, and 20 pesos, and another resident of Holguín made a similar complaint in August because nobody wanted to accept five peso bills.
The practice is illegal. The Banco de Crédito y Comercio (BANDEC) warned in July that refusing low denomination bills violates the rules of the Central Bank of Cuba, as all bills in circulation have full liberating power.
In August, BANDEC reiterated that no establishment can decide which denominations to accept. Despite the warnings, no specific sanctions have been reported against any business, which explains why the practice continues.
The population is left unprotected. Even, a Cuban reported in July that he received his entire salary in five-peso bills, a trap that hits low-income workers the hardest. The bank's justification was that it did not have larger denominations available to make the payment.
The monetary context exacerbates the problem. The official year-on-year inflation reached 25.19% in August, according to figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI). Meanwhile, the dollar continues to rise in the informal market and has already surpassed 700 pesos. Twenty peso bills —which used to cover everyday purchases— now hold little real value, leading merchants to view them as an operational burden.
This week, the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) announced the circulation of two new denominations of banknotes: 10,000 and 20,000 Cuban pesos. The measure was presented by the president of the institution, Juana Lilia Delgado Portal, who justified the issuance as a necessity to "adjust the existing denominations to the situation of the economy, particularly to the price conditions and the needs of monetary circulation."
So while the State issues increasingly higher denominations, citizens are still unable to use the small bills they receive as salary.
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