Monetary order: in Cuba no one will be left helpless

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 12 (ACN) Marino Murillo Jorge, head of the Commission for the Implementation and Development of the Guidelines, ratified this Friday the idea that with the monetary order no one will be left helpless in Cuba, hence the design of a policy on prices, salaries, pensions and social assistance in line with that goal.
Murillo explained that with the increase of the pensions after the beginning of the ordering on January 1, 2021, the government foresees a decrease in the number of vulnerable persons.
He pointed out that the elimination of excessive subsidies and undue gratuitousness - one of the lines of the Ordering Task - will take place gradually.
For a whole year, the cases will be analyzed to specify mechanisms to subsidize people and not products, while at retail prices there are still some 29 billion pesos in subsidies, among which are medicines associated with chronic diseases and electric energy, in the case of the latter it will maintain a partial subsidy.
Electric energy has a very high imported component and everything obtained through that route will be multiplied from day zero by the new exchange rate, which will lead to an increase in the cost of the kilowatt that the State Budget will subsidize with more than 17 billion pesos.
The basket of goods and services will cost 799 pesos for food and other services, while the regulated family basket is 288 pesos; in other words, it is not the same, and this includes budgets for home repairs and use of transportation.
In terms of income, the ordinance aims to recover the role of wages in satisfying the needs of the worker and his family, Murillo Jorge said.
This breaks the great vicious circle between salary and production, which is supported by a measure that proposes the same wealth today to be distributed differently, in favor of those who work or participate in the creation of wealth, he said.
For wage earners, we are proposing a variant so that wages are not affected by price increases, he said, and that a company cannot be allowed to put speculative prices to artificially distribute more profits for the benefit of a few.
He highlighted that even when devaluation is associated to the Ordering Task r and implies a price increase due to the increase in the price of imports, it is necessary to fight against those who incur in speculative and abusive prices.
We know that there are phenomena such as supply deficit and increase in costs and income, the non-state forms, which represent 10 percent of sales in the country, cannot set the pattern for price increases, he said, and called for an all-out war on those who so irritate the population with this selfish attitude.
The monetary order in Cuba goes beyond eliminating a currency and setting an exchange rate; a currency devaluation is an adjustment and the main thing here is to urge to be more efficient in the work, the head of the Guidelines Implementation and Development Commission pointed out.