A supermarket that accepts dollars has opened in Havana, part of growing dollarization in Communist-led Cuba. The government is short of foreign currency, which it says it wants to use to fund social programs. - REUTERS
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00:00This is the first grocery store to accept hard U.S. currency in Cuba in nearly two decades.
00:06Open just a few weeks, it's part of the growing use of the dollar in the communist-run country,
00:11where just four years ago banks stopped accepting cash deposits in greenbacks.
00:16The shop lies in the shadow of a new hotel complex near the sea in Havana's Miramar neighborhood,
00:22which is popular with foreign diplomats.
00:24William Fernandez, one of the lucky few to have dollars, praised the store.
00:28The dollar is always going to circulate here in the whole country.
00:34The dollars that come in can be used here because you don't have to be exchanging money
00:38to get other products in other ways.
00:42Here it is easier to buy, and we get everything here.
00:45Cuba's government hopes dollar stores will reap some of the remittances that enter the
00:49country and allow it to use that hard cash to underwrite social programs like free health
00:54care and subsidized food, energy and transportation.
00:58Relations between Havana and Washington took a turn for the worse this week when U.S. President
01:02Donald Trump reversed measures brought in by the Biden administration to make it easier
01:07for Cuba to acquire dollars.
01:09That's likely to make the dollar crunch more severe.
01:12Here's economist Omar Evelaini.
01:16The country has a shortage of foreign currency, and therefore the quickest way to make up
01:20for this shortage is to accept dollars again, because the dollars that were already deposited
01:25at other times in the banks no longer exist.
01:29But the growing availability of goods and services in dollars versus the local peso
01:34underscores growing inequality between those with and without access to foreign currency.
01:39Odis Bell Saavedra Hernandez said she receives U.S. dollars from her husband abroad to feed
01:45her children.
01:48I hope these supermarkets spread throughout the country, but that other people can also
01:52have the same benefits as me, because there are people who do not have dollars and cannot
01:58acquire the products.
02:01Cuban officials have said the partial dollarization that kicked off a year ago is tough medicine,
02:06but necessary to fix the island's economy.