| 11/01/2021 – 8:06 PM (GMT-4)
More than 500 commercial establishments in Cuba will start receiving peso payments this Monday convertibles (CUC), a measure that reverses the government’s willingness to limit the stores that could accept that currency.
Entities of the Caracol retail chain, the Palmares extra-hotel company, the Artistic and Literary Promotion Agency (Artex) and the Music Recordings and Editions Company (EGREM) will begin to receive payments in CUC., As announced in his official account on Twitter, Marino Murillo, head of implementation of the country’s economic guidelines.
“The conditions have been created so that, starting today, CUC will be gradually accepted in more than 500 new establishments of the Caracol, Palmares, Artex and Egrem Oficial chains across the country, adding to those of Cimex and Caribe,” the official said. .
However, the so-called ‘Tsar of the Cuban Economy’ did not refer to the fact that this ‘countermeasure’ could be due to complaints and questions from Cubans about the inability to make payments in CUC in the network of national shops, after the last day 2, the government announced a list of the only commercial entities that would accept payments in convertible pesos until June, the month in which the currency is due to go out of circulation under the monetary unification process.
The announcement clarifies that returns to customers will only be given in Cuban pesos (CUP), with an exchange rate of 1 CUC x 24 CUP. It also indicates that the payment in CUP is accepted in all denominations of that currency and that partial payments that combine both currencies and magnetic cards are accepted in the same purchase.
In December 2020, an issue of the Government Gazette on “Zero Day” for monetary unification in Cuba reported that the CUC would be withdrawn from circulation in June 2021 and from that date it would only be accepted for exchange in bureaux de change and bank branches in the country.
The process of monetary unification in Cuba began on January 1, 2021, with a single exchange rate of 24 Cuban pesos (CUP) for 1 dollar. The measure implies “the redesign of the monetary, exchange rate, tax, credit, price, salary and other income systems of the citizens,” said President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Since 1994, the Central Bank of Cuba has authorized the circulation of the convertible peso (CUC), equivalent to the dollar, as part of the regulations promoted by the late Fidel Castro in the midst of the severe economic crisis called ‘Special Period ‘, after the collapse of the socialist camp in Eastern Europe.
In mid-2003, the island’s government eliminated the circulation of the dollar in the state sector and since then only two national currencies have been allowed: the Cuban peso (CUP) and the Cuban convertible peso (CUC). In 2004 the measure was extended to retail.
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