Groceries in Cuba and the Empty Bottle of Oil
For decades, the standard food rations served as a safety net during times of economic turmoil like this.
Por Daniel Valero (Progreso Weekly)
HAVANA TIMES – A year ago, the Ministry of Domestic Trade (MINCIN) responded to predictions about the removal of products from the regulated basket with a tweet in which it declined to take responsibility for non-compliance with this distribution scheme. Instead, it implicitly criticized those influenced by rumors rather than staying informed through “official channels.”
This was the recommendation of that agency, as if information could replace undelivered groceries. Even if someone had followed its advice, they would probably have given up by now, simply because there haven’t been any updates.
Over the past year, the official MINCIN account on X posted more than 800 messages, but only a dozen of them were directly related to groceries. The latest post on the subject appeared on October 3, a year after the tweet mentioned at the beginning of this article. It wasn’t official information from the ministry, but just a link to a radio interview in Villa Clara about rice deliveries scheduled for that province to settle debts from June and July. Amid the worst crisis in the regulated supply system in its 62 years, the Ministry of National Institute of Statistics and Census (MINCIN) seems to focus on organizing meetings, morning sessions, and volunteer work. At least, that’s what its social media profiles suggest.
“You, as an institution, have repeatedly failed to comply with all the regulated products in the basic food basket, giving the worms (pejorative terms used to describe some Cubans who live in Miami and abroad) cause to say such things,” questioned Cienfuegos native Orlan Reyes in October 2024, commenting on the Ministry of National Statistics’ attempt to exonerate itself on X. After a year, the agency’s work could be judged even more harshly.
A Month for a Two-Day Trip
On September 19, Cuban television reported from the port of Havana that 16,000 tons of rice had arrived, intended for the standard family basket. Part of the cargo would stay in the capital, while the rest would be distributed to other provinces, as part of an operation that journalist Bernardo Espinosa, citing officials from the Ministries of Domestic Trade and Transportation at the maritime terminal, said would only take a few days.
Considering that Cuba ended 2024 with an effective population of 9.7 million people, the mentioned volume was theoretically enough to provide three and a half pounds to each consumer. Although by then the accumulated delays in grain distribution were seven times larger than that amount, it was reasonable to assume that any “payment”—no matter how small—would be highly valued by most Cuban families.
But nearly a month later, the “rice ship” still hasn’t arrived in many provinces. For example, on October 11, the newspaper Adelante quoted the Internal Trade group in Camagüey, who claimed to be waiting for a ship that would dock in the port of Nuevitas with enough grain to deliver five pounds per person to the people of Camagüey, Ciego de Ávila, and Las Tunas. Most consumers in the eastern region, excluding Santiago and parts of Guantánamo, were in a similar situation, waiting weeks for arrivals that had not yet materialized. Even “privileged” provinces like Cienfuegos, Villa Clara, and Sancti Spíritus had to wait more than two weeks to receive their allocations, sent by cabotage from the capital.
“Even the slowest ship needs two days to travel from Havana to Nuevitas. There’s no justification for this and other delays that have become common in recent years. The only thing I can think of is that when they make these announcements, they don’t have all the product in hand yet and they’re just trying to buy time,” thinks Oniel, a former stevedore at the Nuevitas port of Tarafa.
His mistrust is justified. Over the past two years, complaints from consumers in Camagüey and other eastern provinces have become common on social media, questioning the usual delay between announcements of new rice basket distributions and their arrival at warehouses. In fact, the Internal Trade Commission’s claim that a rice boat would soon arrive in Tarafa is unfounded. According to maritime tracking platforms like Vessel Finder and Shiptracking, checked on October 16, the main port of Nuevitas had no scheduled arrivals for the next 10 days; there were no vessels in port either.
Oniel worked in Tarafa for over 30 years, but a drop in wages caused by the lack of ships and the Ordering Task forced him to leave, like nearly all of his coworkers. With not enough workers to unload the few ships that arrive, the provincial government has had to call in workers from organizations like INDER (National Institute of the Department of Agriculture). Meanwhile, many former stevedores, such as Oniel, have swapped their sashes and sackcloth for construction or fishing gear, or jobs in the private sector.
“After the collapse of the industries, Tarafa found a second wind with the groceries. The situation is challenging not only because of the imported items ready for distribution, but also because of the raw materials brought here to produce the basic food basket. A lot of corn and soybeans were brought down for the feed factory in Camagüey, along with many goods for the fertilizer factory! The feed for the laying hens and the fertilizer used on rice and sugarcane came from there. I don’t understand how that could be done in the 1990s, during the Special Period, and how it’s impossible now,” he laments.
Poverty Begins with Food
An article by economist Joel Ernesto Marill Domenech, published a few days ago by Cubadebate, highlights that between 2019 and 2023, the purchasing power of state salaries decreased by 44 percent. This decline was mainly caused by the rise in household consumption spending due to inflation. On average, prices increased about 12 times, while the amount of money held by consumers only grew fourfold.
Marill’s conclusions are based on data collected during a much better period than the current one. Since 2023, the decline of the Cuban economy has continued to worsen, with the worst statistics concentrated in the food sector. Food has become much more expensive at a faster rate than other consumer goods and foreign currency. Since December 2020, the peso has depreciated nearly 19 times against the dollar, but basic foods such as chicken, rice, and eggs have become more expensive by 20, 40, and almost 100 times, respectively.
Economist Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva has translated the severity of the crisis into numbers through articles on the Basic Food Basket published over the past two years on the website La Joven Cuba. In December 2024, Everleny estimated that feeding two people would cost 24,351 pesos per month, nearly five times the country’s average salary, which at that time was 5,600 pesos. This also marked a 17 percent increase from the previous year, when the same researcher estimated the cost of feeding two people at 19,975 pesos per month.
For decades, the standard food basket served as a safety net during times of economic turmoil like this. During the Special Period, the crisis did not carry a higher social cost mainly because of the products distributed through the ration book. The delay in delivering these or their complete removal has made the current crisis more burdensome.
“The situation was already tough before the pandemic and the Order, but people at least had the security of the food they received. There was a lot of talk about how little they were worth, how poor quality they were… but few bothered to consider what they meant for nearly all families. For example, the average Cuban consumes about ten pounds of rice a month, and seven of those pounds come from the ration book. No economic issue hits ordinary Cubans as hard as the day they can’t go to the grocery store to get their ration. We’ve learned the hard way how crucial it was,” says a Camagüey journalist with extensive experience reporting on social issues.
According to his calculations, just to provide the basic foodstuffs that the standard basket should supply for each person, between 5,000 and 7,000 pesos per month are needed. “A pound of rice costs seven pesos at the grocery store, but bought on the street, its price ranges between 170 and 300 pesos, up to 40 times more expensive; bread is about 30 times more expensive; and eggs, up to 100 times more. This is a terrible economic drain, particularly suffered by vulnerable people, but which to a greater or lesser extent affects almost the entire population,” he explained.
In this context, the Family Care System (SAF) could have been an alternative for the poorest sectors of the population, especially the elderly. However, its actual situation is far from what was envisioned when it was created in the late 1990s. In August, a senior official from the Ministry of National Statistics and Census (MINCIN) congratulated the fact that over the past year, the number of places in these soup kitchens increased by 8 percent, reaching 67,000 beneficiaries. This was positive news compared to recent years, but not as encouraging when compared to data from before the Ordering Task.
In January 2021, just over 76,000 Cubans were attending the SAF soup kitchens, 13 percent more than today. Back then, these places not only had more spots, but they were shared among a less elderly and less economically vulnerable population; the quality and variety of the menus were also much better than today.
Even if all of the SAF’s capacity were allocated to its elderly residents, Cuba would only be able to protect less than three percent of this demographic, the most affected by the crisis. Other equally vulnerable groups, such as the disabled, large families, and the lowest-paid workers, would be left out. Millions of people cannot be protected through the SAF (Social Security System), but until a few years ago, they received some assistance through the standard family basket.
“If it weren’t for my children, I would have died of hunger a long time ago, plain and simple. The last thing they brought to the bodega was cigarettes and tobacco, and that was almost a month ago. I don’t know how old people survive,” lamented a 76-year-old retired teacher, who asked to remain anonymous. Until recently, she kept a small graduated bottle on her kitchen counter to measure oil when she went to the bodega. She refused, with a Numantian resilience, to part with it. But one day, she asked her daughter to throw it away. “I realized there was no point in keeping it. Although they haven’t said it, in Cuba, grocery deliveries have stopped.”