- The first private exchange house opens in Santa Clara, without specifying how the rates will be calculated.
- The Observatory of Currency and Finance publishes a report on the advantages and disadvantages of dollarization.
14ymedio, Madrid, September 16, 2026 – Cubans have outgrown the 2,000- and 5,000-peso banknotes that began circulating less than half a year ago and that, amid rampant inflation, already have bigger siblings. Guerrillas Haydée Santamaría and Vilma Espín will be the faces of the new 10,000- and 20,000-peso denominations that will begin circulating this Wednesday, according to an announcement by the president of the Central Bank of Cuba, Juana Lilia Delgado Portal, during a Round Table program in which other changes were announced to “restore the role of banks in the economy.”
The official said that with the new banknotes, “the modification we had announced in our monetary denominations is complete” in order to adapt to the “price conditions and the needs of monetary circulation.” In March, when the previous ones were presented with the faces of Mariana Grajales and Celia Sánchez, it was not mentioned that higher denominations were planned, so it is reasonable to assume that this is more a reaction to the unstoppable rise in prices (officially 25% year-on-year, but much higher in the informal economy) and the collapse of the national currency.
The television program addressed the main reforms that the State hopes to incorporate into the system, grouped into four areas by the Central Bank: opening and capitalization; credit, savings and financing; innovation and new channels; and the foreign-exchange market and remittances. The most notable announcement was the confirmation that the Island’s first private exchange house is already operating, whose imminent launch was discussed by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero in July. The establishment is in Santa Clara (Villa Clara), and according to Ian Pedro Carbonell Karell, a BCC official, there are several requests to create similar entities.
Once again, details were lacking about the exchange rate being applied, and it was only mentioned that it “provides highly relevant information,” since “it does not respond to posts on social networks or buying or selling intentions”
Once again, details were lacking about the exchange rate being applied, and it was only mentioned that it “provides highly relevant information,” since “it does not respond to posts on social networks or buying or selling intentions, but rather to real, settled and confirmed exchange transactions, which make it possible to better substantiate the official exchange rate” for individuals and the private sector.
Carbonell Karell reviewed some of the measures that are already underway and whose operation has been uneven. Among them is the expansion of the transfer threshold, which at the end of July rose from 120,000 pesos per month, the limit imposed in 2023, to 2.5 million or more, provided that they are declared. This resolves the inconvenience of having to travel to branches to carry out transactions that at this time involve a very small amount of money. The official assured that the printing of new banknotes is fundamental in this case, since it puts more money into circulation and resolves the shortage of cash.
Although this remains to be verified, Carbonell said that the country will move from a model of cash rationing to one of planning to meet demand. Institutions will have to adapt to their customers, accompany them, advise them and agree with them on the financial cycles most appropriate to their situation. “The service must be different for an individual and for a company, because their needs are not the same,” he said.
The official also reviewed the latest resolution allowing private businesses to operate accounts abroad without prior authorization, although they must report their opening, or to deposit foreign currency in cash, a package of reforms presented last week that takes effect this Thursday, September 17.
Another previously known issue that was emphasized was the outsourcing to private businesses of pension payments. The solution, adopted months ago as a response to the banks’ lack of liquidity, already has a model representative: El Olímpico. It is a private venture, which the official press calls a casilla, a food sales outlet, that is paying retirees in Santiago de Cuba through an agreement with the bank. Its owner is none other than Eriel Sánchez, a former baseball player and manager of the Cuban team whose record includes less honorable episodes, such as managing the Under-23 team from which half the squad fled during the 2021 World Cup in Mexico, or the five-year suspension imposed in 2025 by the National Baseball Commission after he struck sports legend Miguel Rojas Rodríguez with a bat.
The officials also spoke about providing greater incentives, especially by reducing commissions for digital payments, since there remains a conviction that online banking can be modernized, which would make it possible to reduce the number of branches while increasing transactions and customer service. All this despite the previous failure of the so-called banking reform. The easing of credit, particularly to finance renewable energy sources, was another of the new developments mentioned, although the experience is also not proving very positive in practice, as the official press itself has warned. In addition, they discussed the imminent updating of regulations related to the use of cryptocurrencies.
“One of the Central Bank’s main objectives is to restore the functionality of the national currency and return greater usefulness to the Cuban peso within the economy,” said Delgado Portal, an analysis that clashes head-on with the opinion of Cuban economist Pavel Vidal. In the preceding hours, the expert sent out a bulletin from the Observatory of Currency and Finance of Cuba (OMFi) in which he precisely points out that “the new rules expand the dollarization of wholesale transactions between companies (State and private) and, to a lesser extent, of consumer markets.” The phenomenon, he adds, is not new, but the current changes “represent another step in reversing the dedollarization process begun in 2004 and also depart from the purpose of the Monetary Ordering in 2021 of restoring the Cuban peso as the economy’s sole monetary sign.”
“One of the Central Bank’s main objectives is to restore the functionality of the national currency and return greater usefulness to the Cuban peso within the economy”
Vidal considers it difficult for the Cuban regime, whether forcibly or through negotiation, to secure another international partner other than the United States, making the dollarization of an economy that is already, de facto, dependent on its northern neighbor almost inevitable. Washington’s sanctions have limited imports, travel and all kinds of investment from any other country, so the generalization of the currency appears “natural” and “logical.”
However, this could be very useful in an initial phase of stabilization—as the Cuba Transformación document points out—to facilitate the entry of capital and financing while the national currency gains strength and confidence. But it recommends that it not be extended unnecessarily, since it creates distortions and inequalities between those who have access to foreign currency and those who do not. In addition, a single exchange rate is important, which these processes do not favor. “Dollarization provides monetary stability but limits responses to international or domestic shocks and increases the economic and social cost of economic adjustments.”
Vidal believes that although the Cuban peso has lost value extraordinarily and the rise in prices has been unstoppable, hyperinflation has not been reached, which allows the national currency to recover its functions over time, relying on some reforms already carried out and others that should be added. Among his proposals are a greater reduction in the fiscal deficit, the unification of all exchange rates, an increase in interest rates, the formalization of the foreign-exchange market and the transfer to the BCC of the international reserves currently controlled by the military conglomerate Gaesa.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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