Hygiene Product Shortages Continue

Cuba: Hygiene Product Shortages Continue
August 28, 2014

HAVANA TIMES — Periodic shortages of home and personal hygiene products
marketed in stores selling in both regular pesos and hard currency will
remain for the remainder of 2014, reported the official press on Thursday.

In the early months of this year products such as deodorant and toilet
paper disappeared from the market almost entirely, and others like
colognes, powders, shaving razors and cream, polish remover, degreasing
soaps, hydrochloric acid and chlorine bleaches, are among the products
that have failed to "stabilize".

The Communist Party daily said the phenomenon is due tofinancial
restraints thatlimited thepurchase ofraw materials andthereforeproduction.

This year the island will produce only 16% of the talcum powder produced
in 2013, while production of colognes won't reach 40%. "Given these
numbers, it is difficult to predict a recovery for this semester," says
Granma, although significant increases were announced for 2015.

Many visitors to Cuba bring toiletries and hygene products with them to
give as gifts, well aware of how difficult it can be to obtain what are
very day products in other countries.

Source: Cuba: Hygiene Product Shortages Continue - Havana Times.org -
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=105796