Food prices in national currency have increased by more than 3 times their value, for most products
Quality of life has gone down
Yunior Rodríguez, forty-one years old, independent, lives in Havana with her partner and her mother-in-law.
Approximately how much do you spend in a month to guarantee your family's diet? How much of your income does it represent?
Expenditure for food only, in a month, between 10 and 12 thousand pesos.
How much of your income does it represent?
It represents between 65 to 85% of income. Family income, due to the salary increase, has doubled or more. However, food prices in national currency have increased by more than 3 times their value, for most products. As a result the quality of life has decreased. The shortage is causing price increases for some products on the black market that rise weekly.
How do you access food and in what percentage? (grocery markets, organic farms and fairs, black market, shipment of combos from abroad, purchase in MLC stores, labor incentives, others).
I get 60% from the black market, then 10% from the warehouse, and 30% from the agricultural market of supply and demand.
How many hours do you spend searching for and buying these foods?
Between the three of us we dedicate about 15 hours a week to the search for food. And this is complex, especially because of the currency. In the foreign exchange market, if before the exchange rate was 1 dollar to 25 Cuban pesos, plus or minus, now the exchange rate is 1 dollar to 75 Cuban pesos plus or minus, and it remains unstable. Then the increase in price is also greater than the purchasing power.
Do you use social networks to find out about supplies and prices in your area, for example, via Facebook or Telegram or WhatsApp groups?
I do not use social networks for this purpose.
Do you consider that your family has enough intake of healthy food for its normal development?
No. We feed ourselves with a disproportion between high amounts of sugars and carbohydrates, and low amounts of vitamins and minerals. During the week we do not consume red meat or fish, dairy products, eggs and vegetables more frequently.
We feed ourselves with a disproportion between high amounts of sugars and carbohydrates, and low amounts of vitamins and minerals.
Who do you think is today guaranteeing the right to food in Cuba, the State or the family?
that the family
Have your food preferences changed in the last two years?
No. Availability has changed.
What are the essential products or that you most often get on the black market? To what extent do you consider that you depend on the black market? How do you access it?
On the black market I secure chicken, mincemeat, milk and bread. I find out and get listening out there, by word of mouth.
In the black market, inflation far exceeds salary increases. The centralized economy is in crisis, it does not have enough supply to combat inflation by increasing supply volumes. The little offer that it offers at prices lower than those of the black market, is stopped here
immediately and goes up for resale in black. Result, it is almost impossible to buy in a store in Cuban pesos, the offer is few, and the queue is massively controlled by resellers. If you add other people, (the most vulnerable, with less purchasing power, without relatives abroad, without private businesses, etc.), who as a result of necessity wake up or sleep in queues, it becomes practically impossible to buy or enter to a local currency store.
Result, it is almost impossible to buy in a store in Cuban pesos, the offer is few, and the queue is massively controlled by resellers.
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