Post by cenydd on Oct 22, 2013 16:24:51 GMT
Cuba is to scrap its two-currency system in the latest financial reform rolled out by President Raul Castro, official media report.
Since 1994 Cuba has had two currencies, one pegged to the US dollar and the other worth only a fraction of that.
The more valuable convertible peso (CUC) was reserved for use in the tourism sector and foreign trade.
Now its value will be gradually unified with the lower-value CUP, ending a system resented by ordinary Cubans.
The Cuban economy is almost entirely state-run and the tourism sector has boomed since the collapse of the Soviet Union plunged Cuba into economic isolation and hardship.
The two-currency system was supposed to protect Cuba's fragile economy but angered locals paid in the much lower-value CUP and denied access to goods only available for those with convertible pesos.
The policy exacerbated the creation of a two-tier class system in Cuba which divided privileged Cubans with access to the lucrative tourist and foreign-trade sectors from those working in the local economy - all-too-visibly contradicting Cuba's supposedly egalitarian society.
Since 1994 Cuba has had two currencies, one pegged to the US dollar and the other worth only a fraction of that.
The more valuable convertible peso (CUC) was reserved for use in the tourism sector and foreign trade.
Now its value will be gradually unified with the lower-value CUP, ending a system resented by ordinary Cubans.
The Cuban economy is almost entirely state-run and the tourism sector has boomed since the collapse of the Soviet Union plunged Cuba into economic isolation and hardship.
The two-currency system was supposed to protect Cuba's fragile economy but angered locals paid in the much lower-value CUP and denied access to goods only available for those with convertible pesos.
The policy exacerbated the creation of a two-tier class system in Cuba which divided privileged Cubans with access to the lucrative tourist and foreign-trade sectors from those working in the local economy - all-too-visibly contradicting Cuba's supposedly egalitarian society.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-24627620
Seems like a pretty strange thing to have tried to do in the first place!