The Cuban peso is losing value fast. On 2 November the independent outlet El Toque put the informal rate at 900 pesos to the US dollar; the central bank's own page showed 781 for 4 November. Output is shrinking, blackouts are long, and a September rule lets private businesses take dollars, a step towards dollarisation.
What is the gap between the official and the informal rate?
Cuba now has more than one price for a dollar, and the one that matters is the street's. El Toque, an independent Cuban outlet, reported that the dollar reached 900 pesos on the informal market on Monday 2 November, up ten pesos on the day and the 13th straight day of peso depreciation. That is El Toque's reading, republished by Havana Times, not an official figure. Sellers were asking between 810 and 1,000 pesos. The euro closed at 990.
The Banco Central de Cuba displayed an official rate of 781 for 4 November. On those numbers the official rate is about 13% below the informal one, a comparison that is approximate: the page does not say which of the bank's three segments it shows, and the two readings are two days apart.
In pesos the gap is bigger than in January (about 119 now against 57), but as a share of the informal rate it is similar: about 12% then, about 13% now. CiberCuba, an exile-based outlet that is editorially hostile to the government, compared the two rates on 13 January: 470 informal against 413 official.
It says the central bank, which introduced a floating system with three segments in December 2025, moves its rate by only a peso or two a day. Its argument that the official rate is a "lie" is opinion; the numbers can be checked. Note the dates: January and November are ten months apart, so these are two snapshots, not a series.
How fast are prices rising?
The official answer is modest. The national statistics office, ONEI, put year-on-year inflation for December 2025 at 14.07% and for May 2026 at 15.89%, as relayed by Translating Cuba and CiberCuba. The December figure covers the formal market only, according to Translating Cuba; the May report does not say. We found nothing later than May.
The economist Pavel Vidal's answer is five times higher: real inflation in 2025 of around 70%, according to a 14ymedio article translated by Translating Cuba. That is an expert estimate for 2025, not an official statistic. We do not treat either number as settled. But an index that leaves out the informal market, where the dollar costs 900 pesos, cannot be the whole story of what Cubans pay.
ECLAC, the UN's regional commission, classed Cuba among its countries with "chronic inflation" and left it out of regional averages, OnCuba News reported in August 2025. The same report carried ECLAC's forecast of a 1.5% fall in 2025 GDP. Other estimates are harsher, which we have not verified, so we give no single figure for 2025.
Why is the peso falling?
Fuel is one cause; the money policy is the other. Start with fuel. Al Jazeera, citing AFP, says the US imposed an oil embargo on Cuba on 29 January 2026, followed by blackouts of more than 20 hours a day, halted industrial production and shortages of water and medicine.
"Embargo" is that outlet's word. Without power, factories, farms and shops produce less, and fewer goods chasing the same pesos means higher prices.
The second is money policy. Vidal's remedies are to cut the fiscal deficit, unify the exchange rates, rebuild reserves and raise peso interest rates. He also says Cuba "has not yet entered a hyperinflation scenario", so this is a drift, not a collapse. It is the cause that Havana, unlike Washington, controls.
What did the state do about dollars?
It stopped resisting them. Central Bank Resolution 102/2026, in force since 10 September, lets individuals and companies open foreign-currency accounts without prior authorisation and lets private businesses accept cash in dollars or euros and deposit it, CubaHeadlines reported.
Vidal warns in that report that full dollarisation would strip Cuba of control over its money supply, interest rates and credit. For ordinary Cubans the result is a two-tier country: those with relatives abroad or dollar-paying work, and those paid in pesos that lose value weekly.
What does David Graeber add?
Graeber, the anthropologist, argued in Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Melville House, 2011) that credit and accounting units predate coins and barter. His line, as quoted in a review in the Fifth Estate: "Credit systems, tabs, even expense accounts, all existed long before cash." He also held that states helped build markets and enforce debts; the Wikipedia summary notes his claim that taxes payable in the state's currency push people into monetary transactions. Parts of this history are contested by economists and anthropologists, and we cite no specific rebuttal here.
We know of no writing by Graeber on Cuba. What follows is our inference, not his. If taxes payable in the state's currency push people into using it, the test of a peso is what the state will take it for.
Resolution 102/2026 lets businesses take dollars and citizens hold dollar accounts, and it did so while the peso was falling. What we do not know is whether the state accepts dollars for taxes or fees; the sources we opened do not say.
If it does, Graeber's logic says the peso has lost its backstop and will keep sliding. If it does not, the peso still has a use that dollars lack, and the slide owes more to deficits and to fuel than to any flight from the currency.
Is sanctions pressure the main cause?
That is the case the Cuban government makes. President Miguel DĂaz-Canel told a rally on 26 July that Cuba is the victim of "a cold-bloodedly calculated genocide" and accused Washington of "economic strangulation", Al Jazeera reported.
At its strongest the case runs like this. The same report says Donald Trump has said he would "take over" Cuba after the capture of Maduro in January, which supports the claim that the pressure is deliberate. Per AFP, the 29 January oil embargo brought blackouts of more than 20 hours a day and halted industrial production.
Fuel shortages cut output, and lower output means less export income and fewer dollars for the foreign-exchange market, so the peso falls whatever the central bank does. Dollarisation, on this view, is what a besieged economy does to survive. We found no independent economist making this argument in the sources we opened, so it is stated here from the government's side alone, and the steelman is thinner than we would like.
It explains the fall in output. It does not explain the timing of the currency. Vidal's estimate of around 70% inflation is for 2025, and the 57-peso gap between the informal and official rates was recorded on 13 January, both before the oil embargo of 29 January. The peso was already trailing a second, informal price before the oil cut-off.
Our verdict
The crux is a testable question: would the peso stabilise if the fuel returned but the deficit and the multiple rates stayed? We think not.
Fuel explains why Cubans are poorer this autumn; it does not explain why the state's own rate trails the street's by roughly 13%, a discount that was already about 12% before the embargo and has not widened with it.
If Havana unified its rates and cut the deficit and the informal rate still climbed, the embargo case would be proved right, and we would say so. Until it tries, the part of the problem that Havana can fix is the part it has not fixed.
What we could not verify: ONEI's own releases, the text of Resolution 102/2026, the central bank segment behind the 781 rate, and any 2026 remittance figure. The US government's motives are a separate question that we have not tested.
Where to read next
- Havana Times: US dollar reaches 900 Cuban pesos, the El Toque report on the informal rate.
- CubaHeadlines on Resolution 102/2026, with Vidal's warnings on dollarisation.
- Translating Cuba: Vidal on official and real inflation.
- OnCuba News on ECLAC's forecast.
- Al Jazeera: DĂaz-Canel accuses the US of genocide.
- David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Melville House, 2011).