Havana/The Government has eliminated definitely the obligation that non-state fishermen had to have a contract with a company authorized for marketing to deliver the fishing license. With this resolution, published on Monday in the Official Gazette, acquires permanent character a measure that was taken provisional form in 2022but that leaves out the star product of the Cuban seas: the lobster.
The text details that the species that may be freely fished are “fish, tuna, oysters, clams, crab and marine shrimp, in this case, outside the coastal lagoons, in the waters of the island platform.” Meanwhile, marketing must be subject to the decisions of local governments, in each case and there will be a “quarterly conciliation process” between the National State Inspection Office and the fishermen on the catches made through the delivery of a sworn declaration.
The current resolution puts an end to the limbo in which the fishermen had been left since the beginning of 2024, since the previous one had a duration until December 31, 2023. That document was received with enthusiasm at the time by the population, who did not leave to point out the delay in relaxing limitations that, in his opinion, tied the hands of thousands of workers in the fishing sector. The consequences were the unprecedented situation that there is hardly any fish in a country surrounded by the sea.
However, despite the good step it constitutes, the tenuous liberalization has not caused any visible effect in the year and a half since it has been approved. According to data from the Ministry of Food, fish consumption fell in Cuba from an annual average of 18 kilograms three decades ago to around 3.8 kilograms in 2022. The figures for 2023 are still unknown, but nothing suggests that they will be positive.
The sector will not recover the production levels experienced in the 90s, when Cuba extracted 100,000 tons of fish from international waters
Although fishermen have been warning for years that the State pays them – like farmers – late and little, officials have almost exclusively attributed the decline of the fishing sector to the deficiencies of the fleet. “Between 1976 and 1990 we had a fleet that fished in international waters. Cuba thus received around 100,000 tons of fish annually. Starting in 1992 there was a gradual withdrawal of this fleet and in 2002 we practically did not have this fleet active. “said the vice minister of the sector in a Round Table in the middle of last year.
Shortly before, in December 2021, Ariel Padrón Valdés, director of Fisheries Regulations and Sciences of the Ministry of the Food Industry, warned that the sector will not recover the production levels experienced in the 90s, when Cuba extracted 100,000 tons of fish from international waters, plus 70,000 Cuban ones and 33,000 imported ones.
Faced with this scenario, the authorities have chosen to resort to aquaculture as a lifeline, but the deterioration has also reached this modality. In 2022, the province of Sancti Spíritus barely reached 57% of the planned production due to a lower presence of species, the shortage of fuel to carry out extraction work and the lack of maintenance of the dams, they stated.
The liberalization of the sector could not be working due to the State’s prices, ridiculous if compared to what a MSME. In a report published by this newspaper in January, several fishermen from Manzanillo (Granma) said that the Fishing Combine pays less than 2,000 pesos for each ton of fish caught, that is, less than one peso per fish. “This forces us to sell to individuals, who buy it from us at 200 pesos per pound. Then they resell it.” Others, they added, manage to close “a good deal with a business owner.” MSMEwho buys their entire catch.”
Meanwhile, lobster and pink shrimp – which will continue to be subject to current regulations – are an extraordinary source of foreign currency for the State and fishing companies, such as Santa Cruz del Sur, in Camagüey, usually catch even more than expected. In 2019, the Government of Cuba earned $63 million annually from the export of lobsters and shrimp, the last year for which a figure is available.
