The problems of the food basket in Cuba
The problems of the food basket in Cuba
The president and minsters of commerce explain
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel pointed out the efforts of the Cuban government to deliver the regulated food basket at the beginning of each month, without partial deliveries in installments. The Cuban president made the comments during the second episode of the new You-Tube series, Desde la Presidencia, posted on April 4, 2024. The episode was dedicated to the question, What is happening with the regulated food basket in Cuba? Appearing on the program with the President were Betsy Díaz Velázquez, Minister of Domestic Commerce, and Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, First Vice-Minister for Foreign Commerce and Foreign Investment.
Díaz-Canel began the program with the observation that the opinions of the people with respect to the regulated food basket are very critical and very negative. The negative opinions are expressed in four areas: (1) the delivery of the basket often is delayed, and sometimes it is delivered to the neighborhood distribution stores in installments; (2) the poor quality of some of the products; (3) the cessation of delivery of some products that previously were delivered; and (4) doubts concerning the commitment of the state to guarantee the regulated food basket. The opinions of the people, the President reported, were obtained through surveys of forty of the country’s 169 cities and towns in eleven of the nation’s thirteen provinces.
The regulated food basket has been a characteristic of the Cuban Revolution since the early years following the triumph of the Revolution in 1959. It provides each citizen at highly subsidized prices modest quantities of food items, including rice, beans, bread, coffee, sugar, split peas, cooking oil, eggs, picadillos (ground meat mix), chicken, milk (whole and skimmed), pasta, salt, compote, cigarettes, and matches. The cost of the food subsidy and distribution program to the Cuban state is $230 million per month.
Díaz-Canel noted that the purpose of the April 4 program is to explain why there has been instability in the delivery, why some products are no longer being delivered, and what are the prospects for the future. In the hour-long panel, the three panelists addressed these issues.
They confirmed that some products, like pasta and matches, have not been delivered for the past two years; and others, such as coffee, oil, eggs, and meat products have been short during the past years. And some products have been delivered to the distribution stores in installments during the month, instead of being delivered in full at the beginning of the month.
The panelists explained that the Cuban economy has not recovered to its 2019 level, before the Covid pandemic forced the closing of Cuban tourism, the nation’s principal industry. Cuba began the year 2024 with low inventories of many of the products of the food basket, and the program has had difficulties during the first three months of the year. Díaz Velázquez reported that the January distributions of salt, split peas, and compote have not yet been delivered to some towns and neighborhoods in four provinces; the February distribution of sugar, salt, split peas, and compote have not been delivered to some localities in six provinces; and the March distribution of rice has not been delivered in the eastern provinces, while sugar has not been delivered in seven provinces.
They further explained that the problems in the delivery of the food basket have been caused by the intensification of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade against Cuba beginning with the Trump administration and the unilateral inclusion of Cuba on an arbitrary list of countries that supposedly have sponsored terrorism, which have resulted in the inability to import animal feed, seeds, and supplies for agricultural production and animal husbandry, which has undermined national production and has created dependency on the importation of food for the products of the food basket. Such importation of food is made difficult by the shortage of international currency to purchase products and by the blocking of issuance by international banks of letters of credit, as is normal in international commerce (which are consequences of the recent measures taken against Cuba, particularly the inclusion of Cuba on the list of nations that sponsor terrorism), combined with higher prices for food products in the world market. In addition, once the products have arrived on the island, there are difficulties in delivery to the neighborhood distribution stores, because of the shortage of fuel for transportation (which also is a result of the intensification of the blockade).
Pérez-Oliva Fraga noted that in the past year, five banks, without previous warning, denied processing transactions involving the purchase of food destined for the basket, which generated delays between forty and 105 days before those ships could embark for Cuba. Moreover, he observed, Cuba cannot buy foods directly from entities in the United States, because Cuba has found that when it has tried this route, the U.S. administration blocks it, or they attach the requirement that the ships have to return empty from Cuba. So in commercial transactions with the United States, the norms of international commerce do not apply. Pérez-Oliva further noted that when Cuba has attempted to buy foods from companies in other countries that are subsidiaries of U.S. companies, these transactions also are denied.
Díaz-Canel stressed that Cuba has excellent relations with agricultural and food producers in the United States, and U.S. delegations from the sector have frequently visited Cuba. But commercial relations are blocked by the laws related to the blockade. If it were not for the blockade sustained by the government of the United States, commerce between Cuba and the United States would be normal and natural.
The three panelists reiterated that there is a constant effort of analysis to look for ways to circumvent these obstacles and to guarantee the delivery of the products in a timely manner. As a result of this continuous effort, the situation has improved. The products of January, February, and March have arrived in Cuba, and their distribution is underway; and the prospects for the delivery of the products for April, May, and June are favorable. As a result of media manipulations of the situation with respect to the food basket, countries friendly with Cuba—such as the Caribbean countries, China, Vietnam, Russia, and many others—have begun to deliver products under favorable financial conditions for Cuba, and in some cases, through donations.
Pérez-Oliva further observed that his ministry is taking steps to transform the dependency on importation. There already exist various ventures of foreign investment that focus on national production, including the production of animal feed. These projects should improve the situation in a short period of time.
Díaz-Canel concluded:
I want to emphasize that the regulated food basket has been assured by the government and the Cuban state since the early years of the Revolution, even during complex circumstances, like what we have been experiencing in the last 4 years. There has been assured to the entire population, without distinction of any kind, essential products of consumption through a supply book. For many, it seems reasonable, while others give it a different interpretation. I think that the food basket is something that is welcomed by our people and well understood by our people, for what it means in terms of impact and with respect to distribution, equity, and social justice. In order to guarantee it in the current conditions, an enormous effort must be made, but we ratify that the Cuban state, the Cuban government, will remain committed to guaranteeing the people their required levels of essential food through regulated distribution using the supply book.
Now in what direction are we going to be working right now to improve this distribution of food? And in a general sense the food to the population beyond the basket, which is a theme that can be addressed on another occasion. Well, in these circumstances we are going to stabilize the food basket. We are making every effort to stabilize the basket and regain a basket that distributes at the beginning of the month all the products included in that basket, which is not what has happened in the last few months.
A second direction of work is to continue expanding national production, substituting the importation of the products of the basket. Guaranteeing more of the basket from our own efforts would allow us to use foreign currency, today used to buy food abroad, to buy inputs to continue increasing national production.
This is not something far away. And this is not something that is merely an argument based on hope and purpose. It is something that we already are doing in some places. The province of Cienfuegos, for example, has attained the production of beans for the entire year; they have it in warehouses and are distributing it through the basket. Every month there are provinces, such as Villa Clara, which from its own production has been able to distribute beans to all the localities. A new source of rice is being worked on in other provinces such as Sancti Spiritus and Granma. Holguin also has managed to produce all the beans for the year.
These are the kinds of efforts that we are promoting in the governmental visits that we are conducting systematically through all the provinces of the country. We are seeing that the provinces are arranging their production in accordance with the concept of municipal self-sufficiency, seeking a balance of food production and food supply in each territory. Later, when things are more developed, we will be advancing to a more just distribution, where we focus on the subsidized food basket for people who are more disadvantaged, who have a certain situation of vulnerability. We will be guaranteeing not a subsidy to products but a subsidy to the people most in need.
The Cuban state and government in all circumstances will remain strongly committed to ensuring food for our population. We have the strong conviction that we are going to get through such situations, which have been aggravated by the intensification of the blockade and the inclusion of Cuba in the list of terrorist countries, accompanied by an enormous and intense media campaign of discrediting to provoke despair and rupture. We are going to overcome these situations, as we always have said, with the effort of Cubans, with the talent of Cubans, and the creative resistance of Cubans. The times to come will be better.
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Final Considerations
The economic, commercial, and financial blockade of the United States of America against Cuba is one component of American imperialism, which is an enormously destructive force in the world. The North American republic, from its founding until the early 1970s, was characterized by a profound moral division. On the one side, there was limited democracy, slavery, conquest, segregation, patriarchy, imperialist interventions, and Cold War. On the other side, there was the promise of full democracy, abolitionism, equality of opportunity for all, civil rights, and peace among nations.
A decisive turn toward the negative side was taken by the Truman Administration, which launched the first Cold War with the then Soviet Union in order to justify a permanent world economy. In the late 1960s, the forces for full democracy emerged with a great positive force, proclaiming peace and love. But each of the sectors that drove it—blacks, students, women, Native Americans, Chicanos, and ecologists—were incapable of forging a sustained and unified force of all the segments of the people. In the context of division and limited understanding among the people, the nation took a second decisive turn toward the negative side with the Reagan Administration, and again with the Bush 43 administration. Those oriented to full democracy were left in even deeper confusion and division.
Meanwhile, in the world as a whole, a movement against imperialism and for the full sovereignty of nations, prerequisites for full democracy, has attained greater force than ever. The worldwide anti-imperialist movement has historic roots in Latin America in the nineteenth century and Africa and Asia in the early 1920s, but it took a significant step toward worldwide organizational unity and formulation of goals and objectives with the 1955 Bandung Conference and the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. Except for the lost decades of the 1980s and 1990s, the Non-Aligned Movement has persisted in its anti-imperialist road, and it today has 120 member states. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China has evolved—under the guidance of three exceptional leaders—to become a powerful economic and moral force, cooperating with the anti-imperialist nations of the world. At the same time, Russia, under the leadership of Putin, has recovered from the collapse of the Soviet Union and is cooperating with the anti-imperialist states. Thus, a fundamental fact of our time, only partially seen and essentially misunderstood in the West, is the construction by China, Russia, and the Third World—step-by-step and in theory and in practice—of an alternative international order based in the principles of the sovereign equality of nations and the self-determination of peoples, principles proclaimed in Bandung in 1955.
No nation is beyond redemption. It is possible for the people of the United States to retake the historic promise of full democracy. In order to do so, the people must forge an ideological reconstruction, because the present ideological formulations are profoundly misguided in objective terms and divisive in political terms. An ideological reconfiguration must be based in (1) anti-imperialist principles of cooperation with the nations and peoples of the colonized regions of the earth; (2) the founding principles of the American Republic, as amended by the social movements to include equality of opportunity for all; (3) understanding of the necessary role of the state in guiding socioeconomic development and guaranteeing fundamental human needs, combined with an understanding of the role of private capital and private enterprises in stimulating economic productivity; (4) the regulation of public discourse not through censorship but through enlightened understanding; (5) respect for the right of the people to hold traditional religious views, even as the nation forges a progressive vision; (6) respect for the life-style choices of all citizens as a private matter, without imposing social endorsement of new life styles; (7) respect for the principles of federalism, with each state enacting laws in areas that are beyond the scope of the Constitution; and (8) the pursuit of social reform agendas through constitutional amendments and new legislation, with an emphasis on education and persuasion rather than social disruption.
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