Cuba's economy. Blog #5 The banking system in Cuba and Cuba's monetary system

Cuba's main bank is The central bank of Cuba. The bank's purpose is:
* To issue the national currency and seek for its stability.
* To contribute to the macroeconomic balance and orderly development of the economy.
* To keep custody of the country’s international reserves.
* To propose and implement a monetary policy which allows to attain the economic goals established by the country.
* To ensure normal internal and external payment operations.
* To dictate mandatory regulations.
* To exercise the functions related to the discipline and supervision of the financial institutions and representative offices authorized to establish themselves in the country and of any other entrusted to it by the laws.

As you can see the banking in Cuba is quite different than the banking in basically almost the rest of world. Since the country is a communist the country, the state remains with control of everything. Cuba has eight commercial banks. The people in Cuba don't save money in the bank because it is so controlled by the government that a person could go to jail for many years if this person has a lot of money saved, since the government knows this is not possible because the employees in Cuba get paid very low. These are the eight commercial banks in Cuba:
* Banco de Crédito y Comercio (BANDEC) (Credit Bank)
* Banco Popular de Ahorro (BPA)(Popular savings Bank)
* Banco Financiero Internacional (BFI)(International Financial Bank)
* Banco Internacional de Comercio S.A. (BICSA)(International commerce bank)
* Banco Metropolitano S.A.
Cuba's investment bank is Banco de Inversiones S.A.



This is the credit and commercial bank. Banco de Crédito y Comercio (BANDEC) was created as a commercial bank. It holds a General License granted by the Central Bank of Cuba , which empowers it to carry out universal functions inherent to commercial banking in operations in the national territory and abroad.
BANDEC distributes its services by means of a network of over 200 branches, completely automated, located throughout the whole country. Another way the bank does its distribution is a remote interconnection system, called Virtual-BANDEC, which allows customers to have access to their account and contract other services from their computers without physical presence at the bank.

The monetary system of Cuba is a dual-value decimal based system, with the primary unit of Cuban money being called the Peso. There are two separate types of money flowing in Cuba.That is the National Cuban Peso and the Cuban Convertible Peso. The Cuban Convertible Peso, also called the chavito, is used to exchange the dollar for it since the U.S. dollar stopped circulating in Cuba. Cuban citizens are paid their salaries in the Cuban Peso, and it is this money in which goods and foods are traded. The exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the Cuban Convertible Peso is officially 1 to 1. In Cuban pesos it would be 28 pesos for 1 USD.
The peso lost value due to the United States embargo against Cuba and the suspension of the sugar quota. Cuban money like most communist countries has no currency value outside the country.
I found this information on Google and the Miami herald. I thought this would be an interesting topic since we talked about banks and money in the class. Since the money in Cuba has no value outside the country and Cuba uses another type of money that the USD is converted to, i thought this might interest the person that reads this blog. Economy is Cuba is a very interesting topic from my viewpoint since it is so different from the other countries because everything is controlled by the government. I thought it would also be interesting to talk about the Banks in Cuba, so i hope this information feeds your knowledge a bit.