Cuba opens first grocery store taking U.S. currency in two decades

Bangkok Post Group

A supermarket that accepts dollars has opened in Havana, part of growing dollarization in Communist-led Cuba. The government is short of foreign currency, which it says it wants to use to fund social programs. - REUTERS

Transcript

00:00This is the first grocery store to accept hard U.S. currency in Cuba in nearly two decades.

00:06Open just a few weeks, it's part of the growing use of the dollar in the communist-run country,

00:11where just four years ago banks stopped accepting cash deposits in greenbacks.

00:16The shop lies in the shadow of a new hotel complex near the sea in Havana's Miramar neighborhood,

00:22which is popular with foreign diplomats.

00:24William Fernandez, one of the lucky few to have dollars, praised the store.

00:28The dollar is always going to circulate here in the whole country.

00:34The dollars that come in can be used here because you don't have to be exchanging money

00:38to get other products in other ways.

00:42Here it is easier to buy, and we get everything here.

00:45Cuba's government hopes dollar stores will reap some of the remittances that enter the

00:49country and allow it to use that hard cash to underwrite social programs like free health

00:54care and subsidized food, energy and transportation.

00:58Relations between Havana and Washington took a turn for the worse this week when U.S. President

01:02Donald Trump reversed measures brought in by the Biden administration to make it easier

01:07for Cuba to acquire dollars.

01:09That's likely to make the dollar crunch more severe.

01:12Here's economist Omar Evelaini.

01:16The country has a shortage of foreign currency, and therefore the quickest way to make up

01:20for this shortage is to accept dollars again, because the dollars that were already deposited

01:25at other times in the banks no longer exist.

01:29But the growing availability of goods and services in dollars versus the local peso

01:34underscores growing inequality between those with and without access to foreign currency.

01:39Odis Bell Saavedra Hernandez said she receives U.S. dollars from her husband abroad to feed

01:45her children.

01:48I hope these supermarkets spread throughout the country, but that other people can also

01:52have the same benefits as me, because there are people who do not have dollars and cannot

01:58acquire the products.

02:01Cuban officials have said the partial dollarization that kicked off a year ago is tough medicine,

02:06but necessary to fix the island's economy.

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