HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 15 (ACN) Alejandro Gil Fernandez, deputy prime minister and head of Cuba's Economy and Planning, said on Wednesday that the strategy is not to dollarize the economy, and the monetary ordering aims to use only the Cuban peso.
It is not conceived to extend in the future the sale in freely convertible currency (MLC), the measure is necessary, but not desirable, and it is fulfilling an objective adapted to the moment the country is living, he added.
The situation of shortage in the retail markets began to be evident since last year by the tightening of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States, which brought about effects on tourism and on income in general, the minster explained.
The country has to import a significant amount of products which are later sold in CUPs or CUCs, but in order to restock, you have to have MLC and therefore, even if there is demand, if you do not have this currency, you cannot restock, Gil Fernandez continued.
According to the deputy PM, in this context parallel economies with a certain degree of informality appeared and the hard currency flowed abroad through people going out of the country and making imports.
The government studied how it could face this scenario and decided to open stores in the MLC to maintain offers in a legal way that were absent from the markets, connect the national industry with those markets that were financed with such currencies, and use part of the resources to partially finance the offer in CUC, the official concluded.
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