Reports from several Cuban provinces indicate that the lack of cash in ATMs is widespread and aggravates the situation for thousands of families on the island.
From Santiago de Cuba, various municipalities of Holguín, and other provinces, you can read Facebook posts from desperate people because they have had to borrow money to feed their children since the start of the holidays on the occasion of July 26.
“Niquero… there are no ATMs and today no money is withdrawn from this bank…”, denounced an Internet user on the social network.
To the comment of a man who suggested that something was wrong in that town, the author of the publication replied: “Teacher, with all due respect. Something is wrong in Cuba, because that is happening throughout the country. They did not plan to leave cash in the ATMs for holidays. There are people who have all their money in pensions and salaries. That is almost a crime.”
“Can someone tell me which ATM in Santiago de Cuba has money right now,” asked another Internet user on her Facebook wall. “Every day it is more unbearable to get cash,” replied one of her followers.
For his part, Internet user Omar Sanchez said on his wall that “after almost a week with broken ATMs, today one manages to work.”
“This is how the achievements of this Revolution continue, God knows how many families had to borrow money to be able to feed their children in these oppressive days where the dictatorship played with the money of the people. This only happens in Cuba, the country where for everything is a problem, nothing is well organized, nothing is done with the people in mind,” he said.
The independent journalist Yoani Sánchez summarized the crisis extended to several regions of the country that “there is no money to buy money”, in reference to the people who have not been able to access the freely convertible currency, mandatory to buy in the country’s assorted stores.
“The dollar and the euro continue to rise in #Cuba but people do not have cash bills in Cuban pesos to buy them. With the peso dead, the rage is over, some say,” said Sánchez.
Are complaints have become frequent in recent months, since on several occasions the Cubans have not been able to collect their wages for the problems generated with the ATMs.
The situation generates mistrust in the island’s banking system, where paradoxically the government affirms that it has begun a process of banking the economy in which people will be able to access their money through magnetic cards.
The Minister President of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC), Joaquín Alonso Vázquez, reported last week that since 2020 Cubans have withdrawn more than 1000 million pesos that have not been paid back in the banking entities of the island, a process that has been accumulating since 2020 and increases the fiscal deficit.
“That cash that left the BCC by way of extracting salaries, extracting accounts from economic actors to buy merchandise, but did not return. It did not do so because there was no accreditation after carrying out a commercial process,” he pointed out about this problem, which is coupled with the loss of confidence of the population and its economic actors in the banking institutions of the country.
In this regard, he proposed “a process of banking transactions, collections and payments that are carried out between the population and economic actors, which is not opening a bank account to a client, but banking transactions so that collections and payments that are executed between all the economic actors or between the population and the economic actors, are made using existing credit instruments such as checks, letters of credit, etc,” he explained.
The widespread crisis on the island is such that this Saturday it emerged that some ATMs are issuing single-sided printed banknotes due to lack of ink in the country.
