Cuba: Hygiene Product Shortages Continue
HAVANA TIMES — Periodic shortages of home and personal hygiene products marketed in stores selling in both regular pesos and hard currency will remain for the remainder of 2014, reported the official press on Thursday.
In the early months of this year products such as deodorant and toilet paper disappeared from the market almost entirely, and others like colognes, powders, shaving razors and cream, polish remover, degreasing soaps, hydrochloric acid and chlorine bleaches, are among the products that have failed to “stabilize”.
The Communist Party daily said the phenomenon is due tofinancial restraints thatlimited thepurchase ofraw materials andthereforeproduction.
This year the island will produce only 16% of the talcum powder produced in 2013, while production of colognes won’t reach 40%. “Given these numbers, it is difficult to predict a recovery for this semester,” says Granma, although significant increases were announced for 2015.
Many visitors to Cuba bring toiletries and hygene products with them to give as gifts, well aware of how difficult it can be to obtain what are very day products in other countries.
Right Griffin! And who are the “Cuban people” to whom the tour guide referred ? Why the Castro family regime to whom everything belongs. Let us hope that the regime follows the example of the coconuts and rots.
I recall looking at a field in Cuba littered with rotting coconuts as my Cuban tour guide explained that the shortages of basic goods were all due to the Blockade. I asked him why they don’t make soap from the coconut fat, as millions of people in Asia do. He blinked at me for a minute, no doubt mentally reviewing his list of government approved statements,
” These coconuts belong to the Cuban people therefor it is against the law for anybody to come along and take them without government permission.”
And so the coconuts rot.
The only appropriate comment is that Moses is correct in this instance. The foolish are those who attempt to deny or justify the lack of toilet paper which was unavailable in our town in Cuba for a prolonged period in the spring of 2014. My mother-in-law said that she had to get Granma as a subsititute and that it reminded her of Fidel’s special period when Granma had been the only source.
Foolish? Way to stay on point. You obviously support the Castros and I bet you never run out of toilet paper. Nice.
I remember being in Cuba for years without toilet paper. we use the grandma newspaper or the bohemian magazine. but the special period came in even the daily newspaper was gone and we have to use the books in my father’s library. a nice edition of the poems.of Luis the gongora in onions paper ,
what a sacrilege.
Stick to Looney Toons foolish Yank
A central planning system can not achieve a well balanced market.
Nature and man have a way to not be bothered by a bureaucratic planner.
Temperatures go up, people drink more beer, beer shortage.
In addition: the theft of raw materials and finished products only increases the scarcity.
Welcome to socialism folks. I mean, really, running out of toilet paper? By the way, we are not talking Charmin either. Cuban bathroom tissue is coarse, single-ply and small. How tough is it to count arses and crank out what you need? Seriously, how many more examples of failed centrally-planned economies are necessary before socialists realize that government does not need to manufacture toilet paper or run barber shops. Leave perfumes, cooking oils and toilet paper to the market. In the name of solidarity, egalitarianism and all that other socialist BS that Castro sycophants love to spout, who wants to bet against me that diaper-wearing Fidel has all the toilet paper he can use at Punto Cero. I bet he even gets to “squeeze the Charmin” and does not have to use the cardboard stuff that regular Cubans have to use.