Facing a shortage of rice and anxious to reduce the cost of importing it, Cuba is calling on citizens not to hoard the grain.
“We are demanding discipline and order in purchases,” state-run Radio Rebelde said during its Friday newscast. “Don’t allow, under any circumstances, people to hoard rice so they can later sell it at a higher price.”
The government subsidizes rice and sells it in government farmer’s markets for 3.50 pesos per pound (453.6g), about US$0.17.
However, rice has become so scarce in recent weeks that “certain unscrupulous people are hoarding,” reported the station.
Cuban officials have repeatedly said they hope to increase rice production and cut imports because of rising prices for the crop, most of which cash-short Cuba has imported from Vietnam in recent years.
The director of the government food import agency, Igor Montero, told the Communist Party-linked workers newspaper Trabajadores in January that this year Cuba could be facing rice prices that had nearly doubled what it paid until recently.
Magaly Delgado, a 72-year-old Havana retiree, complained on Friday that shortages have become so acute that she has turned to the black market.
“I had to pay 10 or 15 pesos a pound to a reseller near my house,” she said.
Rice is a key component of the monthly ration Cuba’s government has maintained since 1962, allowing islanders to buy basic foods that also include eggs, potatoes, legumes, bread, sugar, salt cooking oil, coffee and a bit of chicken, fish or beef, among other items.
Distribution centers distribute 2.27kg of rice per person each month, charging about a US$0.02 per kilo. They then offer an additional 9kg per month for about US$0.08.
However, food from the libreta, or ration book, usually provides most Cubans with only about 10 to 15 days of food. That’s where farmers’ markets come in but rice has been hard to find there of late.
Rice is also sold in special grocery stores for tourists and foreigners who work on the island, but half a kilo there costs more than US$2, prohibitively expensive in a country where nearly everyone is employed by the government and the average state salary is about US$20 per month.
“The rice ration is sacred and never unavailable,” Delgado said, who collects a monthly pension worth about US$13 per month. “But it’s not enough for pretty much anyone since we Cubans eat a lot of rice. That means you have to buy more.”
Indeed, Radio Rebelde reported that Cubans consume 700,000 tonnes of rice per year, making the island the seventh-largest consumer of grain per capita on the planet, it said.
Cuban President Raul Castro has used all of his recent national addresses to decry the amount his government spends on importing food, which exceeds US$2 billion annually.
Hoarding is common on an island plagued by shortages of food and other basics.
Authorities have sometimes moved to prohibit hoarding. After Hurricanes Gustav and Ike wiped out 30 percent of the island’s crops in the summer of 2008, officials limited how much Cubans could buy at farmers’ markets and froze prices to keep vendors from gouging.
So far, there has been no move to legislate against rice hoarding — but the station also gave no indication on when shortages of it might ease.
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