Cuba’s Monetary Unification: a Turn for the Better or for the Worse? / Haroldo Dilla Alfonso

Photos: Juan Suarez

HAVANA TIMES —The announcement that the Cuban government plans to eliminate Cuba’s two-currency monetary system has awakened numerous concerns among common citizens and analysts. This was to be expected, for, even if we assume the simplest and most vulgar point of view on Cuban reality, it is clear that this is a serious issue that is going to change many of the rules of the game on the island’s playing field.

We should not imagine that the world is going to change after the two peso currencies are fused into one, but neither should we underestimate the significance of the measure.

I think that one of the most interesting things we find in the First Report of the Cuban Civil Society Consulting Group recently published by Cubaencuentro – I haven’t been able to find out who these people are – is the statement that some believe Cuban society is changing for the better and others for the worse. Ignoring such changes condemns us to idly imagine a society which is disappearing more and more every day.

The two-currency system was an emergency measure implemented by Cuba’s political class during the worst moments of the stifling economic crisis it brought about. It was also a monetary scheme suited to the economic system Fidel Castro then envisaged: a dual economy with a dollarized, dynamic sector, and a weak, Cuban-peso sector sustained by infusions from the first via payment balances.

It was the system that the military conspired against with its company streamlining campaign throughout the 90s and what former vice-president Carlos Lage promoted with unbridled Fidelista fervor until his political decapitation some years back.

The two-currency system has been maintained, and not without reason. Future studies will reveal to what extent the existence of the two currencies and parallel economies, and the diffuse border between the two which always provided those who crossed it with differential profits, has been a key factor in the original accumulation of Cuba’s emerging bourgeoisie, a class which today is nestled in the folds of the country’s political elite, the black market and foreign investment.

Currently, however, the two-currency system proves unworkable in terms of affording Cuba the quota of technical rationality and transparency its system requires.

READ THE REMAINDER OF THIS ARTICLE HERE, IN THE HAVANA TIMES.

The Havana Times translation is from the original article in Cubaencuentro.

28 October 2013