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Cuba's cash crunch by eliminating a costly government lunch program
that feeds almost a third of the nation's population every workday.
The Americas' only one-party communist government, held afloat
largely by support from its key ally Venezuela, is desperate to
improve its budget outlook; the global economy is slack, and Havana
is very hard pressed to secure international financing. Raul Castro,
76 , officially took over as Cuba's president in February 2008 after
his brother, revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, stepped aside with
health problems. Though some wondered if Raul Castro would try to
move Cuba's centralized economy toward more market elements, so far
he has sought to boost efficiency and cut corruption and waste
without reshaping the economic system. And so far it has been an
uphill battle, something akin to treading water. But now, Raul Castro
has moved to set in motion what will likely be the biggest rollback of
an entitlement since Cuba's 1959 revolution -- starting to put an
end to the daily lunch program for state workers, as announced Friday
in Granma, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper. In a country where
workers earn the average of 17 dollars a month, and state subsidized
monthly food baskets are not enough for families, more than 3.5
million Cuban government employees -- out of a total population of
11.2 million -- benefit from the nutritionally significant free
meal. The pricetag is a cool 350 million dollars a year, not
counting energy costs or facilities maintenance, Granma said. But
that will come to a halt in four ministries experimentally from
October 1 , Granma said. As workers stream to the 24 ,700 state
lunchrooms, the government "is faced with extremely high state
spending due to extremely high international market prices, infinite
subsidies and freebies," Granma explained. Parallel to the cutback,
workers will see their salaries boosted by 15 pesos a workday (.60
dollar US) to cover their lunch. It is a dramatic shift in Cuba, where
the government workers' lunchroom has been among the
longest-standing subsidies, though even authorities have called it
paternalistic. And more troubling, especially for authorities, is the
fact that the lunchrooms' kitchens have become a source of economic
hemorrhaging, from which workers unabashedly make off with tonnes of
rice, beans, chicken and cooking oil to make ends meet. The Castro
government is keen to reduce the 2.5 billion dollars a year it spends
on food imports, which it has to buy on the international market in
hard currency. "Nobody can go on indefinitely spending more than they
earn. Two and two are four, never five. In our imperfect socialism,
too often two plus two turn out to be three," Raul Castro said in an
August 1 address alluding to corruption problems. Some Cubans were
aghast at the idea of losing a free lunch. "What am I going to buy
with 15 pesos," asked a bank worker, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. "I cannot even make anything, even something horrible, at
home for that little." But Roberto Reyes, a construction employee,
said sometimes the state lunch is so bad, he would rather not eat it
-- and pocket the small monthly raise. The president has said health
care and education were not cuts he would willingly make. But Cubans
wonder how long it will be until the legendary monthly ration books
with which Cubans receive limited basic food goods, such as rice and
beans, for free, come under the budget axe.
