Castro revalues convertible Cuban peso by 8 percent

Monday, March  28, 2005

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): President Fidel Castro announced that the convertible Cuban peso is to be revalued by 8 percent against the dollar and other currencies, breaking parity with the dollar since the convertible peso was created in 1994.

"For now, this revaluation will be set at 8 percent" from April 9, Castro said Thursday during a four-hour a speech here before his entire cabinet, senior military officials and 2,000 people.

"This week we have revalued the convertible peso," Castro said reading from a statement by the central bank's monetary policy committee, a week after he announced a 7.0-percent revaluation of the ordinary peso against the convertible peso.

Two currencies circulate in Cuba: the ordinary peso, used by wage earners, and the convertible peso, with which the island purchases two thirds of the consumer goods it imports.

Castro said that the break with the 11-year, one-to-one exchange ratio with the dollar had been prompted by the fall of the dollar against other currencies such as the euro over the past few years.

He said it was Cuba's "right to rebel" against the devaluation of the dollar, which he claimed was the preferred "method of plunder of the current economic powers".

Castro closed Cuba to the US dollar on October 20, 2004, eleven years after allowing it in following the fall of the Soviet Union.

In his speech broadcast live by all television and radio stations around the country, Castro also said that he was more than ever "attracted by the ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin" and repulsed by the principles of capitalism, adding that, at 78 years of age, "I only concentrate on my job: being a revolutionary".

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