Cuban peso traders in Cuba’s informal market pushed the currency to a record low against the U.S. dollar this week, reinforcing a sense that the island’s economic and energy crisis is deepening as the United States tightens restrictions tied to oil flows. In reporting from Havana, the independent outlet El Toque said the informal rate reached 500 pesos to the dollar on Wednesday, compared with about 400 pesos to the dollar last summer.
The informal rate matters in Cuba partly because it is the price residents see and negotiate most often in daily life. The exchange is frequently arranged through private channels, including WhatsApp groups and cash deals among neighbors who obtain U.S. or European currency, and economists and analysts have used it as a barometer of conditions in the broader economy even as the government tries to regulate pricing through official mechanisms.
Cuba has three official exchange rates in a complex system that many residents struggle to navigate, ranging from 24 pesos to the dollar for certain business transactions to a new 455-peso rate introduced in December as authorities tried to bring official pricing closer to prevailing conditions. Even so, most residents still rely on the informal market, where currency moves faster and where prices are more closely tied to what households can actually access.
Ricardo Torres, a Cuban economist at American University in Washington, said the currency’s decline is not simply a monetary statistic but a worsening of everyday affordability pressures. “It’s not good news, obviously,” Torres said. “Many things are already being sold directly in dollars even though most Cubans do not have stable income in dollars.”
The economic pinch shows up in how salaries and staples price out at informal rates. Torres and the reporting on the currency move pointed to the average state salary of about 7,000 Cuban pesos, which works out to roughly $14 in the informal market, and to a carton of eggs costing 3,000 pesos—figures that frame how a weaker peso can translate quickly into tighter household budgets.
The peso’s slide accelerated as Cuba’s fuel supply worsened, and the reporting described a chain of U.S. moves and fallout affecting regional oil and shipments. It said the peso was around 438 pesos to the dollar on Jan. 3, the day of a U.S. military operation in Venezuela that toppled former President Nicolás Maduro, and then described Trump’s announcement that no more Venezuelan oil would go to Cuba, cutting off a key ally. The reporting also said that at the end of January, Trump threatened tariffs on any nation providing Cuba with fuel, and that Mexico cut off shipments to the island even as it continued to deliver other aid.
After those shifts, Cuba’s own announcements and operational impacts began to stack up over days. The reporting said Cuba said it would sell only limited amounts of gasoline in dollars and other foreign currency, and it also said Cuba announced it no longer had enough oil to refuel airplanes—prompting flight cancellations and reducing tourism, which it described as a key economic engine. In Havana, the reporting said public transport has been largely slashed, blackouts have become longer and more frequent, banks have cut operating hours, and cultural events and classes have been affected, with many classes moving to remote formats.
In that context, the peso’s break into a new informal-rate record suggests that currency pressures are tracking the island’s worsening access to fuel and foreign currency, with the consequences spilling into transport, power availability and the flow of visitors that support local businesses.