Cuba’s Customs and the Import Market

Cuba's Customs and the Import Market
July 24, 2014
Once again putting the cart ahead of the oxen
FERNANDO RAVSBERG*

HAVANA TIMES — In Cuba, hacerse el sueco (literally "playing the Swede")
is a popular idiom that means to play dumb and to pretend not to notice
the obvious. I believe that, following the implementation of the new
customs regulations on the island, more than one Cuban authority has
magically turned into a Scandinavian, looking for a scapegoat where they
can vent their rage.

Cuban Customs has been bombarded with criticisms, even though everyone
in Cuba knows that such regulations aren't established by an institution
that merely complies with the resolutions approved by the government.

The new regulations are not exactly extremist when compared to those of
other countries. Five pairs of shoes is more than enough for one person
(no matter how much they intend to walk), and even the cleanest among us
can make do with a few dozen bars of soaps.


The prices of some products lead to contraband. This piece of cheese
costs the equivalent of a State employee's 2 full monthly salaries.
The problem is not what customs allows us to bring into the country but
what we (Cubans and foreign residents alike) need to bring home in order
to fill the enormous hole produced by shortages and/or the extremely
high prices of the domestic market.

I can solemnly swear that it doesn't please me in the least to have to
travel back from Spain with 4 car tires under my arm. Finding and
packing them isn't easy, let alone finding a cab that's got enough room
to carry them to the airport without protest.

Standing in line to check in for flight to Cuba anywhere in the world is
like going to a street vendor convention where you find people with the
most unusual products: furniture, electrical switches, car parts, light
bulbs, television sets, water pumps and breast implants.

What's defective are not Cuba's customs regulations but the country's
domestic market, and the government must acknowledge that it has always
been so. There has practically been no time in over a half century in
which the country has had a steady supply of products, without shortages
or rationing.

An old joke says that, had Jesus Christ been Cuban, he would never have
been crucified because, if you're lucky to get your hands on a hammer in
Cuba, you'll soon find out that nails are few and far between and wood
is nowhere to be found. In fact, there isn't a single place in Cuba
where you can buy a couple of wooden planks legally.

The black market immediately takes advantage of these shortages. I doubt
there's a single country in the world with a black market as vigorous
and modern as Cuba's. It's even got webpages, like Revolico and
Porlalivre, where you can find anything, at twice the price you can find
it abroad and half what the State charges in Cuba.

From a tube of toothpaste to a state-of-the-art laptop – everything
will be cheaper than at a State store, for black market sellers raise
the price by 100 % while the government does so by 240 %.

Most of the clothes and shoes sold in State stores are old, expensive
and of poor quality. A pair of shoes can last you a month, and there's
nowhere you can go to complain when they break because consumer rights
in Cuba are only theoretical.

With the new customs regulations, the government has placed the cart
ahead of the oxen, forbidding the import of certain products before
having built a commercial system that can satisfy the basic consumer
needs of its citizens.

No one should worry that imports will bring about a crisis in Cuba's
domestic market – the authorities responsible for supplying the market
are more than enough to achieve this. They're not even able to maintain
steady supplies of floor mops at stores.

The worst part of this is that the measures will only affect people who
travel only occasionally but will not put an end to large-scale
contraband, which comes into the country on a daily basis in the luggage
of plane crews or in large packages, let through by corrupt customs
officials.

Source: Cuba's Customs and the Import Market - Havana Times.org -
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=105079