HAVANA, Cuba.- The current fall in the price of the dollar in the informal market seems to have no explanation. As I wrote in a previous article on the subject, there are those who expected it around Mother’s Day because something similar had happened in 2023, although it only lasted a couple of days and then took flight at a rate of one or two pesos (CUP). weekly.
Some find the causes of that momentary drop in a possible increase in remittances (especially through unofficial channels, the only ones that reach the remittance in cash) in relation to the date, something that could also have influenced as one of the causes of the sharp decline these days but which alone does not explain why it continues to fall at a rate of five and ten CUP per day, as reflected by independent media that monitor buying and selling intentions in the informal market.
Although this speed has apparently begun to slow down, with the prospect of stabilizing a little above 300 CUP, it is an “inexplicable” fall as the conditions of the Cuban economy continue to be unfavorable for short-term improvement, as well As the exodus – which demands a large amount of dollars – has not ended, however, the exchange rate on the street, almost on the verge of exceeding 400 CUP, had reached a figure that was too high, impossible to be supported by the lows. salaries and pensions of people, as well as the owners of “private businesses” (MSMEs and “self-employed workers”, TCP) who were unable to recover what they invested even by raising the prices of their goods, a reaction mechanism that little by little little was slowing down sales and even leading to the closure of many establishments.
Hence, some attribute the “inexplicable” to the fact of having reached that point in which very few bought and almost no one sold, as well as to the strong campaign unleashed on social networks, focused on lowering the dollar rate, led mainly by the owners of MSMEs but undoubtedly taken advantage of by a regime that, having promised by February of this year to “move forward in the presentation of proposals to resize the exchange market”, had not yet announced its first strategy in May.
Even at the beginning of April, in meetings of the Council of Ministers, the “thinking tanks” had been asked again to accelerate the proposals to “intervene” the exchange market—almost entirely in the hands of unofficial actors—, and just a few days before At the beginning of the fall, on May 16, the same Prime Minister had once again touched on the issue of deploying strategies to stop the unbridled rise of the dollar in the street, a phenomenon that if it continued would have forced the closure of most businesses, including those in the hands of people linked to the main figures of the regime, which are a considerable part of those that exist and even the most important.
Although the social media campaign to try to stop the rise of the dollar began long before May 16 (with publications mostly focused on identifying the dollar as the “source of all evil”), it was from that date onwards that a increase in publications – especially from false or anonymous profiles – with buying and selling intentions well below the exchange rate of those days, to which the administrators of some pages on Facebook reacted – mostly related to MSMEs—, eliminating publications whose sales intentions did not correspond to the campaign, which coincided—as I have been able to learn from several establishment owners—with the refusal to accept dollars in several wholesale businesses (warehouses and distributors) under the pretext of an “unstable market”, which forced retail businesses to sell exclusively in CUP, “restricting” the use of the dollar.
But the above is just an illusion for those who, dependent exclusively on their salaries in CUP, wait for the miracle of a recovery of the national currency. However, the mipymeros’ campaign is mounted precisely on that illusion, sending the message that they are interested in reaching “all pockets” with their prices, even the “most vulnerable”, when in reality it is they themselves who are hoarding foreign currency from the informal market for themselves while refusing to lower prices.
It is enough to pay attention to the details of who are the most active in that campaign, even who are those who claim the “feat” of having managed to influence, with their bombardment of publications, the behavior of the algorithm of those media that monitor the intentions of buying and selling on social networks.
For the most part, the “heroes” of this “movie” would be the owners of MSMEs whose wholesale import and distribution businesses were seriously affected, even at risk of bankruptcy, by the rising rate of the dollar.
If better times are coming for anyone, it will undoubtedly be for the owners of the MSMEs who, by the time the campaign stops being effective and people react, will have hoarded so many “cheap” dollars that they will undoubtedly dominate the informal exchange market for a long time. Just as prices will not drop too much, just enough to cause the feeling, among the most deluded, that the campaign against the dollar achieved its objective.
There are those who, suspecting the coincidence of the Prime Minister’s statements – so unusually confident of finding a “strategy” to “intervene” the informal exchange market – with the moment of the fall, have gone so far as to affirm that, in addition to the The injection of a certain amount of dollars into an informal market where, without a doubt, the price of the dollar rose due to its scarcity and high demand, could have helped this.
And they have said more: that the “intervention strategy”, cooked up between the regime and its micro-businesses – that is, those who do their bidding all the time and whose names coincide with those who travel the most to Washington to “exchange experiences” – , was precisely that: to accompany the avalanche of publications of purchase and sale intentions well below the prices of the moment, with the synchronized leak of a certain amount of greenbacks that would provide it with “veracity.”
In the end, the acts of purchase and sale of the currency – real or simulated – would be carried out mostly between the same actors of the campaign (with which the investment money remains at home), but after unleashing the Panic, among people with dollars “kept under the mattress”, would reap much more than what was initially invested in the “intervention strategy.”
In short, a well-thought-out move that translates into a rounded business, so rounded and circular that if we were to follow the trail of the most active in the campaign we would undoubtedly arrive at the same place as always, that is, the origin of the disaster. of the Cuban economy, which is the same where those other aberrations called “penalization of the possession of foreign currency”, “tax on the dollar”, “forced banking”, “ordering task”, “reordering”, “chavitos”, CUC were born. , MLC and what would be to come as long as there are people with faith that an economy can be “fixed” by those who broke it.
OPINION ARTICLE
The opinions expressed in this article are the exclusive responsibility of the person issuing them and do not necessarily represent the opinion of CubaNet.
Follow our channel WhatsApp. Receive information from CubaNet on your cell phone through Telegram.
2024-05-29 06:44:51
#Campaigns #dollar #illusion #reality