Cuba to Cut Subsidized Goods in Ration System Starting 2026

The shelves at his state-run store, which serves 5,000 clients, sat nearly empty, stocked only with rice, sugar, and split chickpeas.

The bodega, once so full in his childhood that people could barely walk, now resembles an empty room with dusty old posters listing prices and amounts for nearly two dozen goods no longer available, such as yogurt, pasta, and bars of soap. Two industrial freezers, previously packed with meat and chicken, now only keep Amate López's water bottle cold.

Cuba, with a population of nearly 10 million, imports up to 80% of the food it consumes, making the island vulnerable to shortages as essential goods become harder to find. U.S. dollars at private stores, pricing out many on meager salaries.

The current crisis has led many Cubans who lived through the Special Period of the 1990s — when Soviet aid plummeted and the ration book shrank — to say the situation is worse than that era, during which people lost an average of 5% to 25% of their body weight according to one study published in a medical journal.

During the Special Period, goods including bread, milk, eggs, and chicken were in scarce quantities.

Her salary and pension total 8,000 Cuban pesos per month, insufficient for basics at private mipymes stores, where a carton of 30 eggs costs roughly 3,000 Cuban pesos, two pounds of meat hash nearly 900 pesos, and one pound of cornmeal roughly 200 pesos.

"There's hardly anything in the ration book. We're practically living off air," Enamorado said. Her meals now rotate rice, seasoned ground meat, and cornmeal, or sometimes nothing at all, a far cry from past dishes of pork, lamb, fricassee, fried plantain slices, and red beans and rice.

"Now we have to cut back, have one meal a day and live on memories," she added. Cuba is facing a deep economic and energy emergency, with daily life becoming increasingly difficult across the island.

U.S. economy experienced a 2% annualized growth rate in the first quarter of 2026, according to the advance estimate released on Thursday. 3% expansion.

2%.