More flexibility in foreign exchange transactions among economic players

In order to order, expand and energize, in wholesale trade, such operations in foreign currency between companies and forms of non-state management, new regulations accompany in this sense the economic and social transformations in execution...

Fidel Benito Rendón Matienzo in Exclusive 14/09/2026  CUBAHORA

Inter-business and commercial operations at the wholesale level, in foreign currency, has been included as a new source of foreign exchange in the Cuban economy.

This is reflected in Resolution 103/2026 of the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP), published this Thursday 10 in the ordinary Official Gazette number 76, along with another of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC), number 102/2026, referring to the Rules for the opening of bank accounts in foreign currency.
The economic and social transformations, approved by the National Assembly of People’s Power on June 18, demanded to update the general bases for the system of management, control and allocation of those currencies.

On the one hand, in a context of restrictions on its availability due to the unprecedented intensification of the US blockade, and on the other, of the expansion of powers granted to economic actors, and greater flexibility and business and territorial autonomy, it was necessary to temper Resolution 140/2025 of the MEP.

As explained to this journalist Susset Rosales Vázquez, general director of Planning and Development of the aforementioned body, the new provision allows that in foreign exchange transactions state entities, forms of non-state management and cooperatives, among others, can operate with greater fluidity, flexibility and autonomy in order to energize the economy.

The priority is given to the exporting and import substitute sectors, in addition to the fact that through direct payments in foreign currencies it is intended to chain and strengthen the productive links, minimizing the exchange rate distortions that exist today.
In turn, the new resolution contributes to the resuppression of raw materials and inputs for the different productions, and the timely access to foreign exchange for the maintenance of productive activities and services, with direct impacts on the supply to the population without having to access the exchange market.

Susset Rosales clarified that even when foreign exchange transactions in inter-business and wholesale trades become the source of these currencies, in retail trade, domestic currency operations continue and only those that are of interest to the country will be approved in USD.
Undoubtedly, this seeks the protection of the population and improve the purchasing power of the Cuban peso, avoiding that access to goods and services is subject to currency tenure and the current volatility of the exchange rate.

That is why the use of the currency is regulated in the interest of re-approval and increasing production of economic actors, and the measure is in line with the strategic objective of de-dollarization and with the monetary policy of the country.
The possibility of foreign exchange payments to the domestic of the economy by international cooperation projects is even extended, as agreed between the parties.

Resolution 103/2026, of the Ministry of Economy and Planning entered into force since its publication on Thursday in the Official Gazette and will be in effect until December 31 of this year.

On the opening of foreign bank accounts by economic actors

Also in conversation with Ian Pedro Carbonell Karell, director of Payment Systems of the Central Bank of Cuba, we knew that according to Resolution 102/2026, referring to the Rules for the opening of bank accounts in foreign exchange, it is intended to relax the existing mechanisms for this purpose.

He mentioned as important and novel elements, authorizing that non-state economic actors can deposit currency in cash in their current accounts, and can order payments abroad directly in their bank, for import or other related to their economic activity, without having to pass that payment process by the importing entity.

That is, the payment mechanism can be done directly with the bank and once it is executed and has the proof of it, then it can be sent to the importer, points out the interviewee.

Ian Pedro Carbonell clarifies that the regulations of the BCC are with a view to accompanying economic and social transformations, by easing the existing regulatory framework for the operation with the currencies of all the economic actors of the economy, so that there are no obstacles in the inter-business and commercial relations of wholesale, and production and services are increased.

With the previous regulations the state company could have its currency account, and that gave it some capacity and autonomy, but by paying a private actor it could not do it if it was not authorized to operate in currency, says the director.

With the lawful income of their business, holders can deposit cash into their checking account, and with their balances they can ask their bank to order a payment abroad, explains the BCC’s director of Payment Systems.

The resolution of this institution will enter into force seven days after its publication this Thursday 10, in the Official Gazette.

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What they did not calculate: our animalization

Laidi Fernandez de Juan

Cuba debate, www.cubadebate.cu

Our conviction as an unbeatable Cuban people tells us that no matter how dark the outlook is, the sun, whatever it may be, will rise every morning

In the midst of this chaotic situation we live in, where survival prevails and resilience, inventiveness and a resigned way of accepting the inevitable predominate, little by little we acquire qualities that we never imagined we could have. Those who surround us to the limit, imposing crude restrictions on us, forcing us into a permanent state of wakefulness which undermines our central nervous system, which is our entire body, they did not calculate the intrinsic nature of the Cuban people: the stubborn force to invent, to come to the surface, to transform mechanisms, things, things that were until then incalculable. This category of resistance does not appear in any manual. It is something that we have been acquiring over many years of shortages and their consequent alternatives.

I am not going to compare one period with another, this crisis with the previous one, nor how much we have sacrificed, because that would weaken the current state of immediacy in the face of the precariousness of our existence.

If half a year ago it seemed enormous to us not to have basic services for 4 or 6 hours a day (water supply, the essential electricity, gas for cooking, digital or fixed telephone connection), we have already reached the point of having these services for a few hours each day, which forces us to a gradual animalization, to develop skills that we never planned or thought possible to develop.

This does not mean that we are pleased or accept the transformations with pleasure, quite the opposite. Everyone's nerves are frayed, and on the surface, with a terrifying irritation that explains why we fight like beasts for the right of the road or for a simple bucket of water. We do it because, among other reasons, nothing is simple or dispensable.

We all need water, food, electricity, gas, medicines at any cost, even if it implies the progressive animalization to which I refer. There are many examples, but I will limit myself to a few.

Although it violates laws of human physiology, we have already developed a certain night vision, as if we were cats or bats. In the shadows for six months, in the early hours of the morning we see silhouettes of the dining room table, we identify the living room armchair and the bedside table without us falling. The ear acquires new capacities, also unimaginable before this war that we fight day by day. We are no longer frightened by the fluttering of some wrong butterfly that cannot find a window through which to get out.

Those impressive moths we call "tataguas", witch butterflies that sometimes sneak into our homes, walk around without us falling on with our brooms, as before. They no longer scare us nor do we believe they are bad omens of things to come. We already have bad things happening.

Mice nibble on the corners of rooms and the edges of skirting boards without much attention to them. Not only because we are exhausted after fighting battles during the day, but because in our new scale of values, feeling (hearing or seeing) rodents or flying beings is not important.

Chicken eggs explode due to the intense heat and lack of refrigeration. I can attest to the noise they make when they burst, but we already know that it is not a bomb that has exploded in the kitchen, but an egg, and although it is a fatality, it is not the end of the world. At least in the world we inhabit right now.

As if we were crocodiles, we bleed very little, or not at all. The other day a very heavy flashlight fell over one of my eyebrows. Under normal conditions, blood would have flowed from the injured brow arch, but not now. As if the body, the platelets and the physiological cascade of coagulation understood that there are no threads or suture needles, no disinfectants or cotton or gauze or light in the polyclinic, the forehead, the eyebrows and the face are all repressed, and not a bump leaves a record of the trauma. We are reptiles, cats, bats.

We are like "wise elephants," "gentle dolphins" or "multicolored butterflies" accepting a new way of life, a way of life which is constantly changing. It may happen that the blessed hour of electricity comes to us in the middle of the night. In a state of constant wakefulness, we don't even gossip. Each member of the family throws himself out of bed with cheetah speed because we know that in a matter of minutes we have to charge the few pieces of equipment we have, cell phones, fans, as well as washing, cooking, cleaning and perhaps ironing even if it is 3 in the morning.

We look like anxious guinea pigs doing everything at once, with frenzy. Then, like sleepy koalas, we spend the rest of the day regaining the tactile sensitivity of a mole when darkness arrives (metaphorical and real).

I am convinced that our oppressors did not calculate that these unusual and unnatural adaptations would allow us to survive. The vast majority of us already belong to the so-called "ordinary Cubans," and we go to the market as if we were members of a team of ducks, geese or ants, in a silent line to get food, dragging carts with wheels, or wooden boxes adapted for such purposes.

No matter how hard, difficult, cumbersome and suffocating our corrosive daily life is, no matter how animalized we are, and no matter how distant hope may be, we are not going to allow ourselves to be defeated.

Translation by NSCUBA (Nova Scotia)