CUBA – Cuba’s State newspaper Granma wants to leave behind this month of July, of accumulation of anomalies for the regime, with some news that aims to mean a return to normality. Not so much to justify that 10.9% GDP growth that Economy Minister Alejandro Gil Fernandez said occurred in the economy, but so that people breathe and can regain some calm after so many blackouts, lack of food, insecurity for the future and absolute loss of confidence in the leaders. The first news is that there is a return to the production of children’s modeling clay, with the manufacture of about 200,000 sets of colored clay intended for day care centers throughout the country. The Education Media Production Company (EMEG), after a period of difficulty, has assumed the delivery of this educational material to the Ministry of Education (MINED).
This return to normality has been possible “after part of the production process was stabilized with the entry of imported raw materials (whose availability was affected during the stage of confronting COVID-19 in Cuba).” Apparently, Cuban clay manufactured by EMEG depends on raw materials that can only be obtained outside the country, which affects its final quality. Since 1989, the company has been manufacturing a product with a better quality and longer lasting duration than other imported clay, but it depends on those raw materials that, apparently, no one has ordered to be manufactured in Cuba.
Clay, the national one, due to the vicissitudes of the moment, is only limited to commitments to MINED. If a child wants to play at home with this clay, he can’t do it, since the regime decided that it couldn’t be bought in stores. In this way, the authorities limit the growth possibilities of the state company that, if it could produce more, would do so at lower unit costs, be more competitive, meet unmet demands, and who knows if it wouldn’t be able to export its surplus to other countries in the area? If the clay is so good and no one doubts its quality, why not sell it to children in the Dominican Republic or Costa Rica? What does it matter, who cares about all this in Cuba?
And just like colored clay, Granma announces with great fanfare that the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) already has the Cuban vaccine candidate against the Omicron variant of SARS-COV-2 ready. Now it seems that it’s so, although you have a certain feeling of déjà vu when reading this news for the umpteenth time. And as usually happens in these cases, the information was given by the member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party and the General Director of the CIGB, Dr. Martha Ayala Ávila, during a technical meeting with the highest authorities of the BioCubaFarma Business Group. The party is always behind this kind of thing, even with the production of clay.
