Salt Piles up in Guantanamo, Shortage in the Rest of Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – A recent Cuban television report revealed that the “Frank Pais” branch of the salt company in Guantanamo has fully met its production plans, but the product remains stuck in warehouses, unable to be adequately distributed.
Meanwhile, salt is growing scarce in Cuba. Some is being sold online through social media groups. Nonetheless, in Guantanamo the salt company may have to pause production, due to the accumulated surplus product.
In a visit Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel made to the area he was informed that further production is threatened by the “high inventories in the warehouses,” due to problems transporting the product.
The accumulation of the condiment in storage, while it grows scarce in Cuban households, isn’t a new phenomenon. For several years now, different official reports have noted the warehousing of salt due to the lack of transportation to distribute it. In June 2023, prime minister Manuel Marrero denounced the problem in the Guantanamo storage facilities, but without offering any solution.
Later, in February 2024, Vicente de la O Levy, Cuban Minister of Energy and Mining, reported that they had warehoused 9,000 tons of salt, whose distribution to consumers was hindered by a lack of transportation. In April 2020 a similar situation at the Central Salt Company Unit in Puerto Padre was reported by Periodico 26, a Cuban newspaper published in the central eastern province of Las Tunas.
“If the Salt Company in Puerto Padre doesn’t broaden its market for fine salt beyond Las Tunas, Holguin, and Villa Clara, it’s due to the lack of transport to move the production to its destinations. On more than a few occasions, these problems have even been a factor in the lack of delivery to the consumers,” stated the plant’s technical head, Yenisleydys Dominguez Sanchez.
Fabio Jose Raimundo Paz, general director of the Geominero Salt Company Group, recognized in June 2024 that “tens of thousands of tons” were left undelivered because of “logistical complexities and resource limitations.”
According to experts, the accumulation especially affects the far western provinces where there aren’t enough salt mines, and large-capacity means of transportation such as trains or boats are required.
The problem is also affecting the workers’ pocketbooks, since their earnings are limited by the plant’s inability to increase production.
Residents of Guantanamo also indicated to Diaz-Canel during his most recent visit that they’re being hindered by the company’s dependence on a national entity.
The press report pointed out that workers at the salt factory also known as the Caimanera want the company to recover the autonomy it had before becoming a branch. This, they affirm, would allow them to earn more than the 11,000 pesos ($31 USD) they currently make a month.
While at the salt companies in eastern Cuba the workers meet and surpass the production plans, the limitations on distribution not only affect their earnings but also access to the products in the more distant provinces.
A mid-March report from the television station in the municipality of Artemisa informed that in this area of over 450,000 inhabitants hadn’t received the salt scheduled to be sold for the first trimester of the year.
During his visit to the Caimanera salt company on March 27, Diaz Canel recognized the contradiction: “There’s salt at the plants, but it’s scarce in the country.”
However, the leader didn’t suggest any concrete solution, despite the fact that the problem could be solved with a more rational management of the state resources, for example reducing the size of his own caravans, which have included up to seven vehicles at certain times, according to the images on social media.
That kind of adjustment could also contribute to a significant fuel savings, which could then be used to transport the salt.
It’s especially contradictory that, amid these internal logistical difficulties and the insistent official propaganda in favor of “import substitutions,” Cuba continues importing salt from abroad.
According to the World Economic Observatory, in 2023 Cuba imported US $769,000 worth of salt, principally from Spain (US $529,000), the Dominican Republic (US $118,000), the United States (US $36,300), the Netherlands (US$28,700) and Germany (US $13,600).
Between 2022 and 2023, the Dominican Republic the Netherlands and Turkey were the fastest-growing import markets for this product. This fact highlights still further the economic incoherence of the Cuban government in the face of a situation that could be improved simply by bettering the management of internal transportation.
First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.
This is crazy! My family is from Guantanamo. The salt processing facilities there are HUGE!! CUBA is an island surrounded by…wait for it…salt water!! Yet another example of the internal embargo that Cuba imposes upon itself.