Posted on 06/12/2002 11:15:07 PM PDT by kattracks
FLORIDA, Cuba, Jun 13, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Eneida Torres' sneakers are torn, but a new pair would cost her entire widow's pension for the month, and her prospects have just gotten worse.
The communist government has decreed a price hike at the "dollar stores" that sell consumer goods such as sneakers for hard currency. It needs to shore up its dwindling finances before the summer energy crunch, when Cubans turn on their fans and air conditioners.
"This is bad," said Torres, a 59-year-old widow, sitting in her rocking chair in her small wooden house in eastern Cuba. "Petroleum is scarce. Laundry and bath soap only arrives every two or three months" on the government ration.
The sweltering summer is usually the toughest time for the Cuban economy, but this time it's worse than usual. Tourism, the biggest foreign currency earner, was down 14 percent in the first quarter, oil prices are up and income from sugar, Cuba's biggest export, is down. Officials expect sugar will bring in $120 million less than its annual average of $500 million.
In San Luis in eastern Cuba, beyond a sign saying "Sugar cane is our principal wealth," the 148-year-old Chile sugar mill stands idle - a forlorn sight that seems to symbolize the crisis.
The 2,000 workers have been reassigned to other mills or farm work, according to mill administrator Isabel Chavez.
The Sugar Ministry has given no reason for shutting the mill. But at the beginning of the 2001-2002 sugar harvest, the official Cuban news agency reported that only 100 of Cuba's 154 sugar mills were working.
The whole sugar industry is being restructured, but the modernizing technology needed in the mills would cost between $4 million to $5 million per mill, the government has said.
Meanwhile, as sugar prices fall, oil is up, and Cuba has to import more than half its petroleum needs. Fidel Castro's government is cutting energy use by 10 percent at state enterprises.
Torres lives with her son, daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters. She has no relatives abroad to send precious American dollars, and has to manage on her pension of 80 pesos a month - about 3 dollars. She earns a few more pesos by cooking for another family.
Cuba "has its good things: studies for the children, the attention of doctors. It doesn't cost anything, it's free," she says.
But replacing those sneakers looks impossible. While no price list for dollar stores has been published, the increases are thought to range between 10 and 30 percent.
According to an announcement last week, many essentials including milk will get cheaper. But the increases are the latest signal that money is tight.
Oil and food are two imports Cuba cannot sacrifice. Julio Triana, of the government-run Cuban Economic Studies Center, estimates the country pays $1 billion annually for crude and $800 million for food.
"Anyone can add it up," Granma, the Communist Party daily, said after oil soared from just above $20 dollars a barrel in January to 27 dollars a barrel in April.
An especially bruising blow came from Venezuela, Cuba's most important regional ally.
Under an October 2000 agreement, Venezuela was selling Cuba up to 53,000 barrels of oil daily on preferential terms. But shipments stopped during the abortive mid-April coup against Castro's friend, President Hugo Chavez, and haven't resumed.
While Caracas has been silent, Havana says the suspended deliveries have caused grave problems, forcing it to seek more expensive crude elsewhere.
Energy-saving blackouts have been a way of life for years in Torres' town and elsewhere. While they now come only every 15 to 20 days, in the early 1990s they were daily.
In 1993, in a financial crisis caused by the former Soviet Union's collapse, Cuba reluctantly adopted modest economic reforms. These included legalizing the use of the U.S. dollar, approving a limited number of small businesses, permitting foreign investment, and opening dollar stores. There have been no major reforms in the state-controlled economy since.
By VIVIAN SEQUERA Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2002 Associated Press, All rights reserved
Yes, it's true. Fidel has everything he desires.
Castro Leads 1 Million Cubans in Anti-U.S. March - March or Lose Rations!*** Factories and schools shut down, bringing Cuba's tattered economy to a halt. Even the Central Bank closed for the day. The marches were the climax of three weeks of rallies led by Castro to reject demands made by President Bush that the island's one-party state open up to elections and a free market. Backed by anti-Castro exiles in Florida, Bush vowed recently to maintain trade sanctions against Havana until it permit reforms, despite mounting pressure from big business to lift the embargo and allow Americans to travel freely to Cuba.
It was not clear how much choice Cubans had to stay away from the marches. Residents who have lived through dire economic hardships since the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago lose benefits if they shun official events by the ruling Communist Party. Cubans were driven at dawn to the marches in buses and open trucks in a massive operation.***
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