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Food inflation reaches 42.66% year on year as demand rises at Havana canteens

Prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages rose 42.66% year on year through the end of September, according to ONEI, while parish and state-run canteens in Havana serve more people with poorer rations, according to reporting by IPS Cuba and Havana Times.

The National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) reported that year-on-year inflation in the formal market reached 28.44% at the end of September, with a monthly change of 3.37%. Food and non-alcoholic beverages rose 42.66%, followed by restaurants and hotels (39.11%) and transport (24.80%).

At the same time, the projects that hand out meals in Havana report greater demand. La Hermana Cazuela, an initiative of the Catholic church San Francisco el Nuevo that has been distributing food since June, serves a group of 70 diners and is kept going by donations from Cubans abroad, according to IPS Cuba. A parish volunteer, Betzabé Bertot, said demand had grown in recent months: "There were many people going without food, who sometimes ate out of the rubbish, and we decided to do something to help them," she said, in remarks translated by Yamacoa.

The Family Care System (SAF), a state network created in the nineties, runs more than 4,400 food outlets and offers three subsidised meals a day to more than 66,000 people in vulnerable situations. At a canteen on Monte street, in central Havana, 269 people eat every day, more than in 2025, according to the outlet's finance manager, Lázara Rosell, quoted by IPS Cuba. Rosell said beans are no longer a regular item, that cold cuts arrive every two weeks and that chicken has been handed out only once so far in 2026.

Sista Cabrera, a 71-year-old pensioner who goes to the parish lunches three times a week, receives about 5 dollars a month from social security and spends part of it on SAF meals. "There are days when I have no food and I go through them without eating anything, at most just a piece of bread," she told IPS Cuba, in remarks translated by Yamacoa. Another user of a state canteen, Félix Villar, summed up the gap between prices and incomes: "One bottle of oil and there went my 4 thousand pesos," he said, in remarks translated by Yamacoa.

Wages are not keeping up with prices in the private sector either. A restaurant in Camagüey was offering 900 pesos a day, the equivalent of 1.15 dollars at the informal exchange rate, according to a Havana Times report picked up by Infobae. In August the average state wage stood at 7,354 pesos a month, less than 10 dollars at the informal exchange rate, and the minimum wage is 3,210 pesos. Economist Omar Everleny Pérez calculated in September that a couple in Havana needed 47,135 pesos a month for food alone.

A study by sociologist Mayra Espina, published in September and cited by IPS Cuba, estimated that 66% of the Cuban population lives in economic poverty because their income does not cover a basic food basket. The average state wage, a little more than 9 dollars a month according to the figures cited in the same report, applies to 68.5% of the country's 4.1 million employed people.

State media acknowledges the acceleration. An analysis published on Saturday by Cubadebate notes that between January and September 2026 the price level rose 24.8%, against 10.9% in the same period of 2025, and that year-on-year inflation went from 12.5% in January to 28.4% in September. The text attributes the pick-up to the contraction of imported supply and of real output, to monetary expansion driven by the fiscal deficit and to the expectations of economic actors, and identifies August, at 5% for the month, as the highest rate in the past 48 months.

Sources: Infobae · Infobae · Cubadebate

Data updated: 2026-10-24T16:00:00.000Z

Food inflation reaches 42.66% year on year as demand rises at Havana canteens | Yamacoa Observatory