The Cuban government will start selling tractors to farmers in freely convertible currency, through the MLC stores that will receive this equipment marketed by the Ministry of Agriculture’s Logistics Business Group (Gelma).
According to a note published in the official organ Granma, Some 2,000 customers have already visited the institutions interested in this equipment and “628 purchases have been made, the majority of which are from manufacturers and only 17 to industry.”
The data shows who are the actors who are determined to invest in the Cuban agricultural sector. With only 2.7% of purchases made by the state sector, it is clear that it is the smallholders and land tenants who are investing money to improve their production capacity.
Farmers are not allowed to market their products in that currency, so the Ministry of Agriculture must consider whether this is the ideal way to empower Cuban farmers and farmers. to thrive an agriculture devastated by the management of a state economy.
In mid-October, the Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil Fernández, announced that the government would begin selling inputs to agricultural production in the country in MLC.
“We are going to take the step with the equipment, the tractors, little by little we will supply that market as far as we can realize that sales. What mechanisms do we use for these sales? In short, imported consignment products ”, says Gil Fernández.
The minister explained that the suppliers “put the tractors we sell on consignment in the country, and we pay for them when we sell them. With the currency we get, we pay the supplier and he places more tractors and so we deliver via consignment, without having to make a capital investment or advance ”.
“Independent producers associated with productive forms and state-owned companies will be able to purchase tractors from Belarus and Brazil, respectively, through MLC stores in Cuba, Belarus and New Holland,” the Granma note reported. What the media and the state-owned company Gelma did not say is the price of these tractors.
If the sale of this machine follows the same commercial logic used by the opaque companies of the regime that has a monopoly on imports into Cuba, it must be assumed that the price of the tractors will double or triple that of their true market value. If the government can sell a Kia Sportage SUV for $ 50,000When the market price of a model with all the extras is about $ 25 thousand, one should fear that tractor prices follow the same logic.
In the hypothetical case that this is the case, a New Holland TT4.75 tractor (to place a model advertising Gelma will be commercialized), costing about $ 50 thousand in the international market, it can be about $ 100 a thousand dollars cost Cuba. Most likely, the tractor for sale will have hours of use, which would lower the price in a free market, but in the case of the Cuban marketing company, the price of its tractor would double or triple that of the market.It will be the fault of the “tightening of the block”.
In the unlikely event that the official exchange rate is maintained and the Cuban authorities allow the purchase of foreign currency, those Cuban farmers and agricultural producers interested in buying a tractor would have to fetch 2 million, 400 thousand pesos to buy it.
“Independent producers interested in this equipment must provide the documentation that recognizes them as producer and for land ownership,” clarifies the Gelma company. The note published by the official body of the Cuban Communist Party informs without shame that “the modality of trading in MLC is an opportunity that Gelma has taken advantage of since September 10 last year to seek alternatives to the difficulties caused by the intensification of the blockade ”.
In this way, the Ministry of Agriculture foresees the “commercialization of 32 new lines of national productions, such as multi-layer bags for coal, egg rack, boots, vinyl paint, gloves, jute bags, carts, multi-layers, flat files, plastic buckets. , multipurpose boxes and disinfection products, ”says Granma.
The note ends with the celebration that with this initiative to sell “new lines” in MLC to independent farmers, “they’ve raised about $ 300,000.” Liberalizing productive forces capable of creating wealth in the country will be a complicated process to assimilate for those who call “gathering” in order to gain profit.
In the current circumstances of the Cuban economy and society, claiming that prosperity comes from the work of low-paid producers who are mistreated by insulting prices is further evidence of how disoriented the elite mindset of the regime’s leaders is, who only seem concerned about conquering foreign exchange, regardless of anything else.
“These are things that start. It is a first step and we have already opened a group of products in three provinces and we are expanding that possibility that did not exist before, ”said Minister Gil Fernández last October. “In this context, we need to take these kinds of bold measures, which are not at all aimed at dollarizing the country, but we need to look for certain productive circuits that function independently of the allocation of central funding,” he said.