Cuba slashes size of daily bread ration as ingredients run thin

HAVANA — Cuba’s communist-run government slashed by a quarter the weight of its subsidized ration of daily bread, the latest shortage to strain a decades-old subsidies scheme created by the late Fidel Castro.

The bread, one of a handful of still subsidized basic food products in Cuba, will be reduced from 80 grams to 60 grams (2.1 oz), or approximately the weight of an average cookie or a small bar of soap. Its price, too, was slightly reduced, to just under 1 peso, or 1/3 of a cent.

Still, many Cubans, who earn around 4648 pesos a month, or around $15, can scarcely afford to shop for more expensive bread on the private market, leaving them with few alternatives. “We have to accept it, what else can we do?” Havana-resident Dolores Fernandez told Reuters while she stood outside a bakery on Monday. “There’s no choice.”

Cuba last week said it had run short of the wheat flour it needs to produce the bread, a predicament the government blames on the U.S. trade embargo, a complex web of restrictions that complicates Cuba’s global financial transactions.