Currency unification and the 'Tarea Ordenamiento'

For about 25 years Cuba ran two currencies, the Cuban peso (CUP) used for wages and domestic goods and the convertible peso (CUC), pegged one-to-one to the dollar, used for tourism and imports. On January 1, 2021 the Banco Central de Cuba launched the 'Tarea Ordenamiento', eliminating the CUC and fixing the CUP at 24 per US dollar, a large devaluation of the rate used by state firms. Wages and pensions were raised several-fold at the same time, but the changes coincided with the collapse of tourism during the pandemic and tightened sanctions, and shortages of goods pushed up informal prices. Official inflation jumped to well above 70 percent in 2021 and remained high afterwards, and the informal exchange rate moved far above the official one. The unification is the key to reading Cuba's price and exchange-rate series in the early 2020s.