Coming from Canada, the ‘Santamaría’ arrived at the port of Cienfuegos on June 6 and is waiting at sea.
14ymedio, Mercedes García, June 10, 2025 — The cargo ship Santamaría has not yet unloaded in the port of Cienfuegos because the Cuban authorities have not paid for the rice.
The grain, intended for the quota of the June basic family basket, has not reached the ration markets in Sancti Spíritus.
Ration store employees are forbidden to post “no rice” signs to prevent photos of the shortage ending up on Facebook
The stores and warehouses of the rationed market in Sancti Spíritus received the news this Monday like a jug of cold water poured over them. They will have to continue waiting for the rice that is in the hold of the Santamaría, the ship with the Panamanian flag that came from Canada and arrived in Cienfuegos on June 6. The lack of payment is keeping the cargo on board and consumers waiting without explanation.
“I was going to put up a sign saying there is no rice, but we are directed not to put up anything, because then people take a photo and post it on Facebook,” says the employee of a ration store (bodega) in the Kilo 12 neighborhood, where most of his colleagues have been delaying the issue for days. The bodega is, in fact, so empty that in the last few days, only “some sweets for children are left”.
The stevedores and other workers in the sector are becoming accustomed to this type of situation. “We were summoned to unload the rice, but the men on the ship won’t deliver it until they see the money,” an employee of the Ministry of Internal Trade tells 14ymedio.
“Before, this happened once in a while, but now every time we have to stop a distribution operation of some product, especially rice, because it has not been possible to pay for the cargo at the port,” he says. “The month is already moving forward, and if this takes a few more days, people here won’t have rice until the second half of June, if they are lucky, and if not, they are left without rice until July or August,” he regrets.
“You can see that the rice intended for the basic basket doesn’t arrive, but the product continues to come in,” says a woman
“You can see that the rice intended for the basic basket doesn’t arrive, but the product continues to come in,” says a woman. In the private stores of Sancti Spíritus, a pound of imported rice now ranges between 240 and 300 pesos, depending on the quality and whether it is sold in bulk or in one-kilo packages, far from the 155 pesos per pound that was imposed as a price cap on the whole country in March.
The grain, indispensable in the daily menu, which Cuba imports from Brazil, the US, Guyana and Vietnam, constitutes in many households an essential nutritional support, given the high prices of animal proteins, vegetables and produce.
The rice that ends up in private stores comes through state importers, which individuals are obliged to use. Even the stevedores, trucks and warehouses used for the goods channel the supply to the MSMEs. But while the products destined for the ration book do not reach the province, “the containers for the MSMEs do not stop.”
The cost to unload the Santamaría is not known, but the amount is part of the “more than 300 million dollars” that the Cuban government annually spends to import rice for subsidized sale, according to vice president Salvador Valdés Mesa in February. The figure may be even higher. According to the 2023 data, 343,305,000 dollars were invested that year, a record figure in the last five years (in 2019 it was 239,725,000 dollars), especially if one takes into account the decline in population.
“We need to increase national production so that this currency can be used to meet other needs,” said Valdés Mesa
“We need to increase national production so that this currency can be used to meet other needs,” said Valdés Mesa, amid the popular unrest that had caused the delay of several months, from the arrival of the rice quota corresponding to December 2024, that finally, in many provinces, Cubans only managed to consume in mid-February of this year.
The delay in unloading ships due to the Government’s inability to pay is becoming more frequent. In April of last year, up to eleven ships surrounded the island for several days loaded with food, as acknowledged by the first deputy minister of Foreign Trade and Investment, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, in the first podcast of Miguel Díaz-Canel. The situation has been admitted on many occasions by the authorities, who attribute it to the consequences of US economic sanctions that not only affect bulk carriers but, frequently, the electric power.
In September 2024, while the Cubans were suffering one of the largest waves of power outages that year, four tankers waited in Cuban ports for payment before being unloaded. Less than a month ago, there was a similar situation with liquefied gas, which according to the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, has not been supplied in Cuba for 117 of the 150 days of the year.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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