Devil's prices

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Los precios del diablo

What are the scammers going to tell me about prices?, one of whom charged me 50 pesos for nine tomatoes a few days ago (two pounds). And I, like a lamb, had to pay for them, because my mother needed them.

What are they going to tell me if for a bunch of banana they charge you 120 pesos at the Crucero de Quesada?, a place almost adjacent to the Agricultural Companies La Cuba and La integral Ciego de Ávila, two banana emporiums; what are they going to tell me if they ask for eight pesos for a pound of guava, 15 for a bundle of lettuce, the same figure for one of aubergine, five for a pound of cucumber, 500 for a string of garlic on the National Highway (in Sancti Spíritus or Villa Clara, it doesn't matter!) or nine pesos for a "little head" of the same product in the city of Ciego de Ávila and 40 for a pineapple that was stolen in the fields?

Not to mention the white onion or the pound of red beans, which threaten to hit the price of bitcoin.

What are they going to talk to me about!

Some of the resellers, with a sad look on his face, tell you the never-ending story, which almost always begins in the countryside, with "how expensive the guajiros sell the products" and ends on the table, a journey in which the products become more expensive as if by magic several times; clearer: with the ability to steal, scam and resell.

What are these disrespectful people (excuse me for being dismissive) going to talk to me, they are not charged for going to a hospital, or because their son or daughter - newborn or not - is part of 95% of the population (child and adult) that have been vaccinated against 13 diseases, it thanks to the National Immunization Program; or because those same children, who are not to blame, of course —the children of the resellers— go to kindergartens, schools, universities and go as far in the chain of knowledge as they want.

A friend from the municipality of Florencia told me that shoeing a horse cost 40 pesos a long time ago; nowadays, much more than 100 and he does not doubt that putting "shoes" on his animal will cost 200, or more, "yesterday, I told the same peasant friend of mine that putting this bald head in the hands of a barber cost 25 pesos.

Marino Murillo Jorge, head of the Commission for Implementation and Development of the Guidelines, has repeatedly said that even when the devaluation is associated with the Ordering Task and implies a rise in prices due to the increase of imports, it is necessary to combat those who incur in speculative and abusive prices, including state establishments, that are also disorderly in terms of prices.

"We know that there are phenomena such as a shortfall in supplies and an increase in costs and income, but 10 percent of the retail market cannot trace the pattern of the increase in prices," Murillo Jorge said in one of the briefings, and he also called to declare a war to those who irritate so much the population with that selfish attitude.

He stated that even with a deficit in supplies, indiscipline must be faced because it cannot be that a minority that generates 10 percent of everything that is sold in the country sets the price pattern; which would be speculative and abusive ones, so he recalled that it is the authority of the municipal and provincial governments to confront this phenomenon.

In Ciego de Ávila, there are not a few who are worried and busy putting the bell to the cat as part of the Ordering Task, from Carlos Luis Garrido, president of the Defense Council in the Province, Tomás Alexis Martín, vice president, Víctor Limia de La Rosa, a Price Specialist at the Ciego de Ávila's Business Group for Commerce; Yoalis García Álvarez, financial accounting director at the Provincial Food Industry Company (EPIA by its Spanish initials) and, among many others, Evaristo González Camacho, provincial director of the Comprehensive Supervision Directorate, in charge of putting order, at all costs, among violators.

Yoalis speaks of 724 products that are marketed through Commerce and own points of sale and it is necessary to order. The task is not easy.

And Evaristo realizes that his inspectors, as part of the Provincial Confrontation Group, imposed 58 fines for violating the capped prices in the last 15 days.

Setting capped prices, we already know, and expecting that it just regulate chains as long as those ones followed by a pound of beans from the furrow to the bag is very difficult to achieve, although it is not impossible, all supported by the great existing disorder in the matter of prices, most of them exorbitant ones and with very little, or almost no, relation to the cost of the merchandise.

The new prices started in 2021 multiplied by three, by four and others, by six and even by 10, by 20 and more, not always with the necessary arguments when assessing the true price formation.

Another phenomenon gives rise to speculation: in the midst of the power that territories have to put "labels" on certain merchandise, a product can cost differently from one province to another or from one municipality to another and thus it gives way to crossing and business. That is the reality.

This is only an alert for those who have to put order, in a society that has practically lived until now with wages and prices not as high as the clouds; foreign to the economic vocabulary, very fashionable since the beginning of last January: costs of production, expenses and value of the merchandise, words that occupy a place in the ear and the pocket of the people these days.