Scarcity is also sold in MLC.

Photo: Cuba Noticias 360

Text: Cuba Noticias 360 editorial.

Empty refrigerators and shelves lined with several rows of the same product, salespeople who can’t remember the last time they sold wet wipes, and barely two or three customers per floor: this is the panorama that the interiors of many Convertible Currency stores present. These days, the country suffers from chronic deficits that are no longer limited to trading in the national currency.

Even the stores in MLC, which just five years ago took over the entire chain that operated in CUC before the so-called Ordering Task, did not escape the inability to maintain a stable assortment.

At that time, the Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil, assured the television cameras that the shops in the MLC would allow the supply of businesses in the national currency and that establishments operating on Cuban money would not disappear. “This is not Cuba, and it never will be.” However, his statement was refuted by the harsh reality of the island and became one of the most viral memes in recent years.

Today, not only the few remaining stores in the national currency are out of stock, but also those operating in the ILC, with prices that rise day by day without explanation and products of dubious quality.

Domestically, the situation is even more tense because the marketing seems to follow the principle that Havana is Cuba and the rest is landscape; a principle that forces the “guajiros” to be content with what comes into the stores, or to buy at a premium the products they sell in the capital, while resellers move through a parallel distribution network that has proven to be more accurate than the port transport network. -domestic economy.

This partly explains why, for several months, in MLC stores in provinces such as Sancti Spiritus, Villa Clara and Ciego de Avila, the sausage was conspicuous by its absence, and packages were quietly sold on portals and social networks.

The same thing happens with jams, rarely found in Cimex and Caribe stores in the central region, or with the most affordable meats for the Cuban pocket: hot dogs, picadillos, hamburgers… which are not refrigerated in refrigerators for months.” from the field.”

The concept of “more affordable”, of course, does not include beef or pork balls, which at prices ranging from 10 to 20 MCI per kilogram must be purchased depending on the weight of the package, because sellers refuse to cut it like that, a piece of meat can easily cost 100 mlk and even more. A price that Elon Musk could pay without flinching, but not most Cubans who pass by the refrigerators, devour the shrink-wrapped meat and leave it where it is, almost petrified due to low demand.

Personal and household hygiene items are also lost seasonally. Now, for example, not a single store in Sancti Spiritus, nor in several visited stores in provinces such as Villa Clara and Cienfuegos, has a single brand of wet wipes, not to mention the cheapest sanitary pads, which have disappeared “from the map” .Why aren’t there even those that are produced in the Mariel Special Zone?As if no one is obligated to explain this.

This won’t help much either. The consumer needs to find what he is looking for, and not hear again that the blockade is to blame for the shortage.