Agricultural production and inflation are Cuban economy’s challenges

Cuba's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil, on Thursday pointed to agricultural production and inflation as two of the biggest challenges being faced by the domestic economy.

Gil said, regarding the situation in the sector, before the lawmakers of the National People’s Power Assembly (Parliament), that Cuba urgently needs to face the deficit in agricultural production, which has systematically decreased in recent years.

Without agricultural production there can be no price control, stressed Gil, who gave as an example what happened with the swine pork program, which in 2017 delivered to the industry nearly 200,000 tons of pork, while in 2022 it only managed to generate 16,000 tons, including five tons to the industry.

The biggest impact was on the drastic decrease in food imports, but the solution cannot depend on the entry of a ship, he stressed. He explained that work is being done to connect production with sales in foreign currencies, so that it can generates income that allows it to develop.

He also stressed the need for the standardized family food basket, which annually costs between 1,500 and 1,600 million dollars, to stop being based on imports and to have a greater participation of national items.

Gil added that local food production is a determining factor in this and called to work with realism and a sense of urgency.

The deputy prime minister also addressed inflation, which at the end of April was 45.4 percent compared to the same period in the previous year.

It has several causes, some of them external, such as the rise in prices in the international market, against which we can do nothing, he explained.

However, productive inefficiency and low yields of our economy are issues that we can solve, as well as the speculation of various actors, who take advantage of the supply deficit to sell a product at three or four times its acquisition value, he pointed out.