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Guess they will be happy to plant anything but tobacco soon ... Depressing. Tabacuba adds more pressure to Cuban vegueros: it reduces the amount of MLC they can buy as a 'stimulus' The measure displeases Holguín producers and adds to dissatisfaction with the high cost of inputs and the insufficient amount paid by the state company for the harvest. Osmel Ramirez Alvarez Holguín 23 Dec 2021 - 11:28 CET https://diariodecuba.com/economia/1640255318_36380.html The state-owned company Tabacuba has added more pressure on Cuban vegueros, already dissatisfied by the high cost of the supplies necessary to produce tobacco and the insufficient amount paid by the company for the harvests, which for many makes investment unsustainable and forces them to bet on other crops. The last measure that has outraged tobacco growers is the reduction from 5% to 3% of the Freely Convertible Currency (MLC) that they can access as a "stimulus" and only for the tobacco produced that the company considers "exportable". "These people (the state company) move the ball to you every day. One cannot plan with anything, because nothing is safe," complained Roberto Díaz, an export tobacco producer in Mayarí, Holguín. Díaz also criticized the company's delay in providing vegueros access to the percentage of foreign exchange for the tobacco already sold. "Look at them kicking to sell us those MLCs… It's a time consuming delay," he said. With the Ordering Task initiated by the Government in January of this year, which involved changes in wages, prices and in the management of foreign exchange in the national economy, one of the strategies to boost Cuban sales abroad has been to allow private or state economic actors that pay taxes on exports "retain" a percentage of the accrued in MLC, that kind of virtual dollar, a substitute for the extinct CUC. As part of this, producers of export tobacco and honey that exceed their sales plan, and any other producer that manages to export a product or sell it in the chain of stores in MLC or in the Mariel Special Development Zone, they "hold" a percentage in foreign exchange. In practice, this means the right to, with the money earned, buy an amount of MLC at the official exchange rate (24 pesos for one dollar), as a "stimulus". "One day they say one thing and the next they change it, this is crazy," criticized Ignacio Rodríguez, another veguero. "And it is not that all the money earned is calculated for the currency, it is only that of the tobacco that classifies for export. For example, if my tobacco was valued at 150,000 pesos and only 50,000 were exportable layers, when it was at 5% I had to buy 2,500 MLC; now, at 3%, I can buy 1,500 MLC. That's a thousand less! " "The worst thing is that from those MLC they discount you for the supplies you buy. For example, a bag of compost costs 900 pesos, which is already very expensive, but then they discount 75 MLC as well. They complicate everything with tangles and obstacles, and it is hit wherever he works for, "he added. For his part, Juan Ramírez, also a producer, considered "unfair that they only pay MLC for the layers for export tobacco, because in the end nobody makes a tobacco only with the layer. The thin and impeccable layer is the final packaging, the one that it gives 'sight' to the twisted tobacco, but inside it has a cape and the gut. Even what it wears the least is a cape. However, for the rest they do not value exports, only for the cape. That is a deception, "he said. "Anyway, I don't understand how if they say that they want to stimulate us with the MLC they lower the percentage. That instead of stimulating, discourages. Apart from how expensive they sell insecticides, fungicides and fertilizers, how much the workforce has increased, the The guards, the insurance, and the low price they pay for the tobacco that they classify for export, come to lower the percentage of MLC. The profit is in being able to sell the MLC for 80 pesos on the street or buy with it something that one needs " at the currency stores, he reasoned. In effect, the "stimulus" of the retention of MLC works thanks to the fact that the Cuban economy does not have the capacity to sustain a stable market for buying / selling foreign currency at the official exchange rate of 24 CUP for one MLC. Although the government has dollarized the economy, passing an important segment of retail trade and services to MLC, for months it has not sold physical currency to Cubans. The way to acquire them is the black market, where prices have tripled.