HAVANA.- After the announcement of the postponement of the fuel increase by the Cuban regime, there are several conjectures that Cubans are making regarding the reasons for the suspension of the entry into force of the new prices.
“The Cuban Government postponed the increase in the sales prices of gasoline and diesel, as well as the partial dollarization of their marketing, the star measure of the economic package that has generated enormous repudiation among the country’s inhabitants,” the portal reported this Thursday. dailycuba.com.
In January, The Cuban regime announced that as of February 1, new retail prices for fuel sales would be applied on the island., which would imply an increase of up to 500% in its value. The measure includes the creation of a network of 28 service centers, of the 613 existing in the country, that will sell fuel in dollars.
Without the measure having been applied, the price of gasoline and diesel skyrocketed in Cuba during January, as did the queues at service centers, added Diario de Cuba, which added that the reaction of Cubans to the package made the officials of the regime rush to defend it and ensure that price increases will not affect the most disadvantaged, who are the majority of Cuba’s inhabitants.
Cuban economist Pedro Monreal said that the regime “perhaps has made a second official reflection on the possible ‘butterfly effect’ of the rise in fuel prices on general inflation, due to the high weight (9%) they have in the total sales of formal retail goods”.
In a thread on his X profile, Monreal recalled, showing official data, that “in the first half of 2023 (most recent data) fuels were the second product with the greatest relative weight in sales of retail goods among individually identified goods in the official statistics”.
“One of the risks of the economic package is that a first wave of prices, led by fuel, followed by a devaluation of the official exchange rate in a context of high fiscal deficit and growing weight of the private sector, would cause a second wave of prices,” he said.
On social networks, several users questioned the argument about a “virus from abroad”, the argument used by the Cuban regime to justify the stoppage of the new prices.
“I am a computer scientist and there is something strange there,” questioned on the Facebook wall of journalist Lázaro Manuel Alonso, from the official Canal Caribe, Yadiel Pérez Villazón. “Our systems have several layers of security (firewall), from the ETECSA gateway to the applications themselves… Either they were working with depreciated software or the OSRI (Security Office for Computer Networks of the Ministry of Communications of the Republic of Cuba) had that issue neglected,” he explained.
Also, a forum member on cubadebate.cu, who uses the pseudonym Un Cubano Más, asked: “Viruses from abroad? And why does the network that supports fuel marketing transactions inside the country have visibility abroad? “Either it’s a novel or the network architecture is so bad that this possibility was a strike.”
Cybersecurity incident
On Wednesday, the Cuban regime announced that it is postponing the increase of more than 500% in the price of fuel that was scheduled to start this Thursday under the argument of an alleged “cybersecurity incident”, and did not report, for the moment, a new date of entry into force of the measure, while analysts indicated that the postponement is due to the unpopularity of the measure.
The Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Planning of Cuba, Mildrey Granadillo, reported that the “decision to postpone the implementation of a government projection linked to the update of fuel prices and their marketing in a selected network of service centers to sell in foreign currency” It is due to “the occurrence of a cybersecurity incident in computer systems (…), the origin of which has been identified as a virus from abroad.”
The official stressed, in statements to national television, that “it will be informed, in a timely manner, when the conditions are created to implement the government’s projection linked to the update of fuel prices.”
In addition, he reiterated that updating fuel prices is necessary to encourage savings and contain demand, due to the high prices that the country faces in the international market.
However, Granadillo stressed that logistical conditions and fuel sales remain at current levels, without a stoppage in services to the population.
At the beginning of January, the Cuban Minister of Finance, Vladimir Regueiro Ale, reported that the retail price of regular B90 gasoline and regular diesel will go from 25 Cuban pesos (0.95 euros) to 132 (5 euros), the special B94 gasoline will increase 30 pesos (1.14 euros) to 156 (5.95 euros), and the special diesel will rise from 27.5 pesos (1.05 euros) to 150 (5.72 euros).
Source: With information from Europa Press / diodecuba.com
