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FROM
CUBA
Cuban
produce markets in short supply after government
measure
HAVANA, September 9 (www.cubanet.org) - Since
September 1, many privately-operated produce markets
either have been closed or have very little to
sell. Apparently, the private vendors are reacting
to a government measure enacted that day that
lowers the price of most produce.
The closings have seriously affected consumers'
ability to get food, to the point that in the
El Cotorro municipality of Havana province, for
example, Communist Party officials called in the
operators of the markets to a meeting on Thursday,
and told them that unless they open, even if to
sell only one product, they would be deemed to
be on strike and would lose their vendors' licenses.
In other municipalities, government commerce
inspectors have visited vendors at home or at
work with essentially the same message: Open for
business or lose your licenses.
The government measure decreed price reductions
of between 20 and 30 percent for some products,
and up to 50 percent for others that formerly
sold by the unit and will now be sold by weight.
On the surface, the measure appears to be beneficial
for consumers, but its results have shown otherwise.
The private produce markets are usually embedded
in residential neighborhoods, are easily accessible
to consumers, and are usually well-supplied. The
people who run them are tied to the land (it's
the only way they can get a license to run them)
either by owning small plots of land or by being
children of those who do.
Consumers' only alternative, the government-run
markets which sell at subsidized prices, are most
often not as conveniently located and don't have
what people want or need. Last Friday, for instance,
in the Havana suburb of Altahabana, commonplace
items such as green peppers, onions, and scallions
were not available.
The private vendors say they can't afford to
sell at the prices mandated by the new government
measure. They say they have to pay between 30
and 40 pesos a day to the laborers who work the
soil, and 50 pesos per night to those who watch
over the produce so it won't be stolen. "Any
other way," said one farmer, "we couldn't
get anybody; farming is hard work." They
also have to pay, they say, 150 pesos a bag for
fertilizer in the underground market because the
government either won't sell it or won't sell
them enough of it.
More importantly, most of them say they simply
won't accept that someone else set the prices
for their produce.
Finally, these farmers-storekeepers argue, the
government wants them to lower prices, but it
won't lower the prices at its dollar stores, the
only other places where consumers can reliably
obtain what they need.
In a twist new to Cuba these last forty years,
these farmers defiantly say they would rather
let their produce rot in the fields than sell
it at the government-mandated prices.
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