Castro bans use of greenback as currency from Nov. 8
Havana: Cuban leader Fidel Castro has ordered an end to the use of US dollars as currency on the communist island beginning on November 8, state-run media said yesterday.
In a television announcement late on Monday, Cuba’s central bank said that tourist-oriented hotels, stores and similar businesses that have accepted hard currency for 11 years will only take payment in so-called “convertible” pesos.
Cubans and tourists alike will still be allowed to hold dollars but can only spend them after exchanging them for pesos with a 10 per cent surcharge. The convertible pesos – traded for dollars at a one to one ratio – exist parallel to Cuba’s virtually worthless peso national currency.
The 10 per cent surcharge for exchanging US dollars will not apply to euros or other international currencies, which may still be used for commercial transactions among firms on the communist island.
Castro, who broke a knee and arm in a fall last week, was in the television studio on Monday night for the reading of the new policy. He justified the change in currency rules as a reaction to the hostile policies of the US.
Wearing his familiar green military fatigues and his arm in a sling, the aging revolutionary blasted Washington for accusing Cuba of laundering drug money and fomenting terrorism. “Let them not dare to accuse anything. This country’s destiny was set a while ago, and there is nothing that can intimidate us, that can threaten us,” he said.
“How can Washington assume the right of accusing Cuba of being terrorist when it continues with its atrocities and bombings against various nations around the world?”
Earlier this year, US President George W. Bush tightened rules under long-standing US economic sanctions against Cuba for money transfers, which are commonly made to relatives on the island by prosperous Cuban expatriates living in the US. The change in US policy was meant to starve Castro’s regime of scarce hard currency.
Castro, 78, called the US measures “a last-minute invention to destroy a political system” and warned that the Cuban people “will not be robbed of the fruit of their work.”
He claimed that the US has tried to deter foreign banks from supplying dollars to the Cuban government. “The silly fools (the US) thought they were going to do as they pleased. Let’s see what they do now with these measures,” Castro remarked.
■ Castro’s decision to ban the use of US dollars shows that his regime is weak and feeling the sting of tougher sanctions introduced by the US earlier this year, the State Department said yesterday.
“This move is yet another indicator that Castro is refusing to do what’s best for his own people,” State Department spokesm­an Adam Ereli said. “It shows that he’s cynically trying to preserve a bankrupt regime at his people’s expense.” – DPA


photo: A Cuban shows a 20 US dollar bill along with a 20 Cuban ‘convertible’ pesos bill in Havana, yesterday. – Reuters
Last update on: 27-10-2004