The Cuban Central Bank (BCC, in Spanish) announced Wednesday the implementation of a new exchange market structure, introducing a daily floating exchange rate segment for currencies, alongside two existing fixed rates.
The Central Bank’s President, Juana Lilia Delgado Portal stated that the current coexistence of different foreign exchange rates “generates distortions, incentivizes informality, and complicates the banking and fiscal traceability of economic activity”, so authorities have the objective of create the conditions to initiate transformations in the foreign exchange market, under principles of graduality and temporality.
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A new three-segment structure was designed as a transitional scheme to avoid a sharp, disruptive devaluation:
- Segment I: Maintains a fixed rate of 24 Cuban pesos (CUP) to 1 unit.
- Segment II: Maintains a fixed rate of 120 CUP to 1.
- Segment III: A newly created segment featuring a daily floating exchange rate, to be published by the BCC. This rate is intended to reflect “the objective existence of differences between the official exchange rates and the real value that reflects the scarcity of foreign currency”, explained the official. The BCC will daily update this rate on its official website.
The first two segments will be maintained to prevent sharp devaluations of the exchange rate and, consequently, the value of the national currency, trying to protect the population in basic and sensitive transactions, preserving stability and predictability in the prices of essential goods and services.
The third segment, based on a daily floating rate, will allow exporters and other foreign currency suppliers to sell at a competitive price determined by supply and demand, in a way to incentivize the inflow of foreign currency into the exchange market, which will serve as a source for its operations and reduce the pressures and irregularities of the informal market.
The reform aims to gradually recover the convertibility of the Cuban peso and move toward monetary convergence in an economy plagued by multiple, disjointed exchange rates.
🗣️💵|| Anuncian transformación del mercado cambiario de divisas
🗣️ @BancoCentralCub, en la persona de su ministra presidenta @JlDelgadoPortal anunció, una transformación de su mercado cambiario de divisas, que entrará en vigor a partir de este 18 de diciembre.#ACNreporta pic.twitter.com/1ZedHIA030
— Agencia Cubana de Noticias (@ACN_Cuba) December 18, 2025
Text reads: “Currency exchange market transformation announced @BancoCentralCub, in the person of its Minister-President @JlDelgadoPortal announced a change in its foreign exchange market, which will take effect on 18 December.”
Addressing the MLC
On the other hand, Delgado explicitly denied rumors about the elimination of accounts in the so-called “freely convertible currency” (MLC, in Spanish), asserting the goal is to “strengthen the purchasing power of the MLC and its use value.”
“An immediate unification of the exchange rate, without a transition stage, could cause a sharp devaluation, with greater inflationary effects than current ones and a deepening of the loss of purchasing power of the national currency,” Delgado warned, citing international experience with economies facing accumulated imbalances.
The strategy, aimed at recovering the purchasing power of the national currency, is to concentrate and orient the foreign exchange market by connecting the various economic actors -state and non-state- in the production, export and marketing of goods and services at competitive prices.
The legal provisions enacting these changes will be published in Cuba’s Official Gazette and will enter on force on December 18, 2025.
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