Havana, Cuba.- The new pricing policy in Cuba seeks to protect the purchasing power for workers in the budgeted sector after the salary increase with which it was benefited, an authorized source said the eve.

The Minister of Finance and Prices (MFP) on the island, Meisi Bolaños, pointed out in a press conference that the first source of financing of price increase is in all the reserves and potential of contributions to the budget generated in the national economy .

Likewise, she stressed, the greatest commitment in the state budget contribution plan, and even the identification of reserves of potential income of the state socialist sector, tributary of 85 percent of the contributions to the budget.

Also, she added, other measures have been taken that will help this year to achieve budgetary framing from a rational treatment of public spending that, without affecting basic social services, will guarantee the redistribution foreseen in other activities and for the benefit of the salary of the budgeted sector.

By 2020, she said, we are working with a group of indicators that guarantee and sustain the financing of this measure.

At the end of June, the Council of Ministers of Cuba, headed by its president Miguel Díaz-Canel, approved several measures, including the salary increase, in order to promote an economic strategy based on the maximum use of internal capacities and human potential the country has.

Bolaños said that in order to preserve the real value of the salary increase for nearly one million 400 thousand people, the non-price increase was arranged for both the state sector and the other forms of non-state management existing in Cuba.

The price measures are detailed in the most recent resolutions of the MFP (301 and 302) and while the first one explains the policy for companies or state entities; the second specifies the rules to be followed by self-employed workers, agricultural and non-agricultural cooperatives, credit and service cooperatives and basic cooperative production units.

In relation to non-state actors, the regulations reiterate the power that provincial authorities have to regulate prices in correspondence with the economic and social conditions of each of the territories and, for the first time, municipal authorities are empowered to do so .

In addition to protecting the purchasing power of the population and avoiding the excessive increase of some prices without apparent justification, these measures seek to preserve the country’s financial balance, the official said.

During the meeting with the press it was reported that to date 11 provinces have issued regulations regarding prices for non-state management forms that, according to Bolaños, were carried out on the basis of studies, to review the costs and expenses of this sector and the evaluation of the economic capacity of the inhabitants of the locality.

The minister was emphatic when she said that violations of the regulations will not be allowed and urged the population to report any irregularities.