Havana/The Cuban Government eliminated the maximum prices established for the retail sale of chopped chicken, edible oil, powdered milk, pasta and sausages, after Miguel Díaz-Canel himself acknowledged this week that the limits failed to contain inflation and ended up causing the disappearance of products.
The decision appears in Resolution 150/2026 of the Ministry of Finance and Prices, published this saturday in the Extraordinary Official Gazette number 73. The rule came into force on the same day and maintains the exemption from paying tariffs for the importation of these five food groups.
The resolution repeals provisions 225 and 310 of 2024, through which the Executive had approved both the customs benefit and the maximum retail prices. By revoking both regulations, the national limits imposed on merchants disappear.
Since July 2024, chopped chicken could not be sold above 680 pesos per kilogram, while the maximum price of edible oil was 990 pesos per liter. Powdered milk had a limit of 1,675 pesos per kilogram, pasta 835 and sausages 1,075.
“Price caps, in practice, failed to contain inflation”
However, the official limits had been widely exceeded in practice. According to the update prices for this Sunday made by 14ymediothe liter of oil is sold in MSMEs for 1,600 pesos and reaches 1,850 at the Correo de Pueblo Nuevo fair, in Holguín; and the 1,900 at the Delio Luna Echemendía fairgrounds, in Sancti Spíritus, almost double the old maximum.
A kilogram of powdered milk costs 3,200 pesos in MSMEs and reaches 3,700 at the Holguín fair, more than double the limit set in 2024. A pound of chicken, for its part, is sold at 550 pesos in that same market and 650 in the Sancti Spiritus venue. Converted to kilograms, these prices are equivalent to approximately 1,213 and 1,433 pesos, respectively, well above the 680 pesos authorized until this Saturday.
The failure of the cap policy was recognized this week by Díaz-Canel during the closing of the Extraordinary Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. “Price caps, in practice, failed to contain inflation,” the president admitted. According to his diagnosis, these measures “many times caused the disappearance of products, diversions towards illegality, higher prices, less tax collection and an impossible race between real prices and administrative decisions that always arrived late.”
Díaz-Canel also recognized that the limits remained “immovable in ignorance of the changing economic reality” and that they hindered those who tried to develop their economic activity within the law. “For this reason, we are not going to continue capping prices in a general way, as the prime minister explained,” he stated.
For years, many economists have been calling for the end of the ceilings, which were incapable of containing inflation and were often responsible for emptying the markets.
The president added that the Government must correct “distortions of the tax system” that make production chains more expensive and end up being reflected in the final price. He also linked the abandonment of the caps with the announced transition from subsidizing products to subsidizing people, an old promise of the ruling party that has not yet materialized in a general way.
The text of the Gazette provides that imports of chopped chicken, edible oils – except olive oil -, powdered milk, pasta and sausages are exempt from payment of customs tax, in accordance with the subheadings included in the annex.
In the case of chicken, the exemption includes frozen chicken pieces and offal. For oils, items corresponding to soybean, palm, sunflower, safflower and cotton are listed. The list also includes different types of milk and cream powder, pasta and various meat preparations.
One of the new features is the exclusion of powder detergent. This product was part of the package of six goods benefited in 2024, but does not appear among the imports exempted by Resolution 150. The preamble itself specifies that the previous exemption is maintained, “except for the detergent powder product.”
For years, many economists have been calling for the end of the caps, which were incapable of containing inflation and were often responsible for emptying the markets. But raising them in the midst of the current crisis, without a recovery in supply, real wages or the value of the peso, fuels the fear of many Cubans that prices will skyrocket to figures that are difficult to imagine today.
