HAVANA, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Unifying the two currencies that circulate in Cuba is a "complex process," the country's Economy Minister Alejandro Gil said in an interview published on Friday.
However, the roadmap to scrap the dual currency system, which has complications of its own, is in an "advanced phase of study and approval," Gil told state daily Granma.
Though he did not offer a deadline for the move, he did assure Cubans with savings in Cuban Convertible pesos (CUCs, whose value is equal to U.S. dollars) that their savings "will not be affected."
"We ratify the guarantees on bank deposits and cash in the hands of the population," he said.
He also dismissed speculation about adopting the U.S. dollar, saying that "our monetary policy is not intended to replace our national currency, the Cuban peso (CUP), with the U.S. dollar."
The Cuban government wants to complete monetary unification by 2021, and now that the date is closer, the topic has once again emerged in the media and among entrepreneurs and citizens.
A few days ago, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the end of the dual system will serve to "boost the economy and improve the living conditions of the population."
Economists have been urging currency unification for years.
Former Cuban Economy Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez said the dual currency system is one of the major problems of the Cuban economy because it causes complicated distortions in public-sector accounting due to differences in exchange rates.
To overcome the economic crisis sparked by the fall of the former Soviet Union, which had for decades helped Cuba's economy withstand the pressures of the U.S. trade embargo, the Cuban government introduced the dollar-pegged CUC in 1994.
The CUC has dollar parity but is worth 25 CUPs on the exchange market, providing short-term relief but causing long-term distortions in the financial system.
"It makes it difficult to measure the economic activity of the country when summing up expenses in CUP with those calculated in CUC or U.S. dollars," Rodriguez noted.
In 2013, authorities announced plans to unify the two currencies. In November 2019, stores at Havana's international airport ceased to accept the CUC.
At the same time, some government-run stores began to give back change in CUP when customers paid for goods in CUC.
Experts believed that currency and exchange rate unification will not solve Cuba's economic problems but is crucial to restoring the value of the Cuban peso.
